As if our country would be dishonored by its leaders doing the will of its people.
As if we have the moral authority to punish wrongdoers around the world.
As if red lines don’t serve most to back their artists into corners.
As if Brian Higgins isn’t right.
So maybe it is cool that Michelle Obama can dance like a mom, maybe because she is one:
But it’s also way cool that the other night, while awaiting our family ball that never really got off the ground (N was going to be Bella and had named H Cinders), I spiffed up and proved that I can dance as good as any parent trying to make his daughters’ evening:
Back in the early days of my adolescence, which hasn’t yet quite dissipated, I listened to a weekly Christian rock radio show called the Saturday Night Express. The DJ rocked the house, man, and I even won two cassettes from him in a drawing, one a compilation of a bunch of non prominent thrash-metal Christian punk bands, and the other a demo from the Rage of Angels which sported an interview with the band and one of my favorite glam songs, “Do You Still Believe in Love?” And I got saved, too, several times.
I also took to attending the Christian rock concerts in the local college’s auditorium. The Newsboys came a few times, before they were really famous. The first time they were amazing: the guitarist ran all over the stage with his tongue hanging out, playing mesmerization itself. By the third time I saw them, though, I was less charmed even in spite of the drummer’s hydraulics setup that turned him upside down, partly since in one song the guitar player–a different guy than before and much more mellow–even ripped into his solo in the wrong key, and I saw the lead singer give him a dirty look.
It was not as dirty, though, as the looks M gives me sometimes when I introduce our band’s songs by telling all the details all wrong, like the time I said the song we were about to sing, which she’d written just after falling in love with me, was about another guy.
I don’t know if it was at that Newsboys performance or maybe the second that I bought one of their tapes and after the show waded through all the other adolescent misfits gathered in the lobby to get all of the band members’ signatures on the tape jacket. One of guys, when I handed him the cover to sign, looked at me a bit quizzically, then scrawled his name. Later I noticed that two of the signatures I’d gotten were identical.
I have since given that album to a boy at my church. I’m pretty sure his family still has a tape player.
When it comes to flattery, though–and it all does have to come to that, since this post is titled as much–one solitary incident at one of those small-town Christian concerts has always stood out to me. In the pitch dark between songs, as I recall, the lead singer had to ask the lights man to give him a little light so he could see what song was next.
“I’m saying that to show you that we’re human, too,” he told the audience, as if… As if I’d thought him otherwise?
I was reminded of this just a couple weekends ago when I took N to a planetarium show. In her presentation, the college student guide–who did an excellent job, really–couldn’t remember the name of a star or constellation or something I can’t remember and had to ask her fellow student for it.
“See, I don’t know everything,” she told the gathered throng, as if…. As if we’d thought her omniscient? As if the predominantly early elementary school aged crowd was hanging on her every word and idolizing her and were now crushed?
Maybe they were; N was in a state of constant marveling at the experience. “Are we actually moving?” she asked me at one point during the afternoon’s short dome film about molecules; later she crawled into my lap.
Of course, neither of these As if… stories is to say I don’t flatter myself, too, mostly by writing about myself on my blog, but whenever else possible, too.
For example, at the planetarium we were seated in front of two people with a child. During a film simulation of the Mars rover landing, one of the adults asked the other, “Is that an animal?”
Is that an animal? I didn’t turn around to flatter myself by thinking out loud, “Umm, it’s a digitally rendered space capsule with fire coming out of its rocket boosters and so it is a piece of technology and not an animal.”
Now, there is a fine line between flattering oneself by fully enjoying one’s excellence and just being critical of others. The previous paragraph makes a fuzzy blur of that line. That part which of it is critical I blame on my college education, which has enabled me to use words like “that part,” “which” and “of it” and during which one of my professors talked a lot about teaching critical thinking. That fall I wrote in a student-newspaper editorial, “I’m afraid I’m becoming a critical person.”
And I have become as much, certainly.
Just think of all I leave unspoken! Such as:
At the doctor’s office last week N was asked three times by the same person in the space of ten extremely patronizing minutes what she did this morning.
In response I didn’t smile sweetly and say, “You asked her this already. Do you have amnesia?”
Then, after N had received four shots she’d heartily resisted, the same person kept saying, “You did great! Now you’re all ready for kindey-garten!”
I again didn’t say out loud, “Actually, she cooperated about as well a chainsaw pinched by the tree it’s cutting down–she made a racket and got stuck anyway. And we’re going to have our schooling at home.”
And after a colleague denounced Obama’s inauguration as “taking away from” MLK Day, I didn’t say, “What? What? Did you really just say that?”
“Actually,” I also didn’t say, “I think MLK in some ways would have been … flattered. No, honored. (Perhaps.)”
This has been one of the most enjoyably relaxing vacations I’ve ever, ever had. I’ve soaked up visiting with people, doing small projects around the house, reading and drawing and just being around the girls, and generally feeling laid back. But since today was my last chance at break, I kicked my butt into gear.
M had taken the girls in the van into town, so I washed all the hard floors, folded and hung laundry, and didn’t think about this evening’s supper which M had asked me to make until I went to town and the grocery store.
As I wolfed down a meager lunch, I decided that taking the key ring with just the car keys–and not also the van keys–would be fine. Of course there was always the chance that M would accidentally lock her key in the van and would need me to rescue her, but since that has never happened, I figured I’d be alright with just the car keys.
It turned out I was, insofar as she didn’t, but my brother-in-law didn’t make out so well. I crossed paths with him in the hardware store, where he was asking for a jimmy-a-long or some such thing to use to break into his van.
“I never even lock the van,” he groaned, “but I did today. And I was having a productive morning, too.”
At the grocery store I found some pork chops cheap but passed up a sweet ice cream deal because chocolate mint chip wasn’t one of the options; on a lark I also snatched a bundle of rotten bananas.
As exciting as each of these developments were, however, the highlight of my day came at the gas station. I’d brought along 27 gallons of gas cans to fill, plus needed to top off the car tank, so I maxed out my credit card’s $100-at-a-time gas purchase limit. As I was grabbing my receipt and turned to re-seat myself, a truck pulled up on the other side of my pump.
I didn’t pay it or its driver any mind, but I heard him bellow, “You know, boy, that your taxes are going up.”
I didn’t know who he was talking to so I ignored him, but by the time I’d lifted the car door handle, he was in full view, just a big, ruddy elderly man unscrewing his gas cap.
He bellowed again, this time directly at me, “Your taxes are going to go up. You’re going to have to pay more taxes.” He didn’t look happy about it.
It doesn’t happen often, in moments like these, that I am able to think of the exactly right thing to say until hours later. Today, however, my second cup of breakfast coffee seemed to help.
“Well,” I smiled politely, “maybe some good will come of that.”
“You must like Obama,” he bellowed.
Now, I admit I like Obama. But I also like the Libertarian Gary Johnson, for whom I voted last year. Go figure, how I can prefer two leaders of such different political persuasions; I guess it means I’m open minded, whatever that means, or maybe severely fickle (my mom used to call me that regarding my romantic interests, which varied from day to day).
However, my open-mindedness shuts every available in-leaking orifice whenever conservative-radio listeners begin to rant, so I smiled again and said, “I’m Libertarian,” and buckled my seat belt.
He didn’t waste any time in bellowing back, “Well, then you’re an idiot.”
I could do nothing but laugh and laugh, start the car, and drive away.
Back at home after a few other stops, I prepped supper, then gathered tools to work on my shed roof. The shingles have a leaky area which I’ve tried unsuccessfully to fix before, so I’d gleaned some plastic foundation sealer sheeting or something like that from my parents’ construction site to cover the suspect area. But the roof was still ice covered, so I gave up and decided instead to use the new chain saw chain I’d just bought for cutting up some branches I’ve accumulated.
If you haven’t tried accumulating branches, you really should give it a go.
Trouble was, after about five minutes of really swell cutting, I hit a nail or something with the saw and from then on it cut like fine-tooth sandpaper, so I ended my outdoor work stint with filling some new driveway potholes with gravel.
Somewhere in there I dropped over to my sister’s house to borrow some cream cheese. Earlier in the afternoon I’d gotten the recipe for the cake I’d made from her blog, but was opting to make a non-peanut butter version of her recommended icing.
“I have two packages,” she said.
“I just need one.”
“Okay. And you don’t have to return it, either, since we’re leaving the country.”
“In that case, can I have both?”
“Yes, but let me check this recipe right now…I might actually need it. Ah-ha. Yes, I need it. Sorry, you can have only one package.”
“What are you making?” I asked.
“Just some peanut butter icing.”
Yup, the same icing I’d decided not to make.
And then, glory be, it was suppertime: perfectly steamed carrots, perfectly cooked and straight-from-the-rice-cooker jasmine rice, crock pot chunks of pork wallowing in high-fructose corn syrup barbecue sauce, and banana cake with cream cheese icing and cold milk.
We were ready for the meal, too. The girls shoveled it down, and so did I. M took dainty bites.
By bedtime we’d eaten all but one tiny piece of the pound and a half of meat, more than two-thirds of the rice (I’d put four cups of dry grains into the cooker), all five of the steamed carrots, and over a quarter of the 9×13 banana cake.
“It’s my consolation meal,” I told everyone, “since I have to go back to school tomorrow.”
Earlier this week NPR’s morning news report moved seamlessly from the Connecticut school shooting to something like “the names of ten nine- to eleven-year-olds are still unknown”; after a moment of confusion I realized the story had changed to a bomb blast in Afghanistan.
Additional news compounds the season’s weightiness stateside: Calls for increased gun control measures encourage assault weapons purchases; the Westboro Baptist idiots talk about picketing the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims’ funerals.
It’s a heavy time for me as a parent and teacher–and I can’t even begin to imagine the grief now faced by families and the communities in Newtown or east of Kabul.
And it’s Christmas, when we sing about the Prince of Peace’s reign on Earth and proclaim that justice “shall guard his throne above, and peace abound below,” all of which “no end shall know,” lines from one of the five or so hymns I ever learned to play on the piano, the yuletidal To us a child of hope is born.
I believe in what that song is about, but not because God is my security chief. (If he were, I’d better get my head out of the sand real quick and start looking at other options; as far as I can tell, God isn’t doing a very good job of protecting the innocent.) Rather, I believe less in God personified or deified and more in Earth-grounded goodness that is life giving; the Christ child symbolizes hope for a better way of life that, while upside-down, cultivates that which is right.
It’s a messy theology, with few clear-cut answers and lots of human obligation; my Christmas hope cannot be removed from humanity’s roles as justice guarders and peace abounders.
Yet hope I do: that even in the inevitability of our vulnerability to nature, each other, and ourselves, all that is life giving will increase and know no end.
My governor wants to bundle teacher raises next year with policy that makes it easier for under-performing teachers to be fired. A raise would be grand, say teachers, but anything that challenges tenure is a no-go.
This response by teachers devalues our profession.
If teachers think the work we do is important enough to society to deserve more compensation–and think this we do, believe me–we must accept the fact that our role is also important enough to receive a little critical oversight that can snuff out ineffectiveness when merited.
Societal respect for and recognition of a profession is perhaps best reflected in high salaries. Teachers want that respect, but not at the cost of job security. Trouble is, the societal payoff for increased salaries is boosted competition for coveted jobs. That’s an easy okay for new hires, but holds limited impact if employers are not enabled to glean good faculty from the general educator base and let the rest move along.
The influence we teachers think we wield over our nation’s youngsters is notable. I face my sixty students for nearly ninety minutes every day for 180 days, thereby reigning over more than 16,000 childhood hours each year. If I do less than foster growth in each of my students during each of those hours, I have let down the kids and society–and myself.
Whether or not teachers are paid more, we’d better be good at what we do, and when a teacher’s work is sub par, worthless, or detrimental, that teacher needs to do some reinventing or find a road to hit. I’d prefer my car’s safety belts were manufactured and installed by someone who was good at doing that rather than by someone who was keeping their job only by paying union dues; mine is no trivial preference that my children sit under the tutelage of someone who teaches passionately and effectively rather than someone who is merely counting the days until summer break.
Certainly teachers need protection from inept or mis-motivated higher ups who might fire them unjustly, but the idea that teachers deserve unchallenged tenure is as misguided as the resistance teachers often grumble about being evaluated. Teachers in general dread classroom and walk-through observations by principals, and I admit that they still make me nervous, even though I’ve chosen to welcome them as–and have never experienced them as anything other than–opportunities to receive helpful suggestions and affirmation.
But more important than just reminding me that I’m not self employed is the underlying value that ongoing evaluation places on the work I do: for the sake of all, I am worth professional scrutiny.
So the world’s in an uproar because a fast-food chain owner voiced a controversial opinion and now people are vociferously either boycotting or supporting the restaurant.
I ate there today…sort of. I bought a lemonade, and cashed in two library summer reading program prizes: two kid’s meals, one for H (and me) and one for N.
(The reading program’s been a smashing success. Not only does N continue to love to read; she now also faithfully points out Chick-fil-A billboards along the highway.)
(She also ardently points out water towers. Earlier this week she said of one covered in fading paint, “I thought it was a country ball,” remembering the large, water tower-like globe that we’d seen a few weeks before.)
This Chick-fil-A thing really is an opportunity worth not missing, particularly for advocates of same-sex marriage. I remember reading an article a while back about an anti-gay protest being turned on its head by the people being protested: they started a fund raiser kind of like a walk-a-thon in which people agreed to donate to the protested cause for each minute the protest lasted, thus completely debilitating the protesters’ mission.
So here’s what same-sex marriage supporters should do today, quick before Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day ends: Go eat at the restaurant, in great big numbers. Spend lots of money there. Eat good chicken. Socialize with all the people who disagree with same-sex marriage. Make some friends. Marry them (or don’t). Eat some more. Make more friends. Fill the anti-party with the anti’ed.
And at the very least, enjoy the food. It’s pretty darn good, in my own humble opinion.
This week I kindly informed my superior, “With today’s and tomorrow’s cancellations, I have officially graduated from this jury service term…. In the name of celebration, I am now accepting pepperoni pizzas, extra jeans days, and Amazon.com gift certificates usable towards a Generac 5939 GP5500, 6,875-watt, 389cc OHV, portable, gas-powered generator.”
I’d been hoping for a good case to sit through, but as close as that ever came to happening was on my first day of service when I lasted only until the very end of the jury selection process before being dismissed. That particular case would have made for fascinating discussion in the jury room: the (college student?) defendant, while his neighbor was away from a couple weeks, cut a hole in the drywall between her townhouse and his, and when another neighbor came over to bring in the mail and check on the supposedly empty house, there the man was, naked.
In his jury questioning remarks, one of the three defense attorneys said that while the facts of the case were not in dispute, the “indecent exposure” charges were questionable on the basis of intent: Did the defendant intend to be seen without his clothes? (The jury apparently didn’t bite, and the man was sentenced to a ten-thousand-dollar fine and a year in jail.)
Being questioned during the jury selection process was itself a little like being on trial, although my answers were fairly innocuous: I’ve never been convicted of any crimes, I’m okay with “talking with strangers about parts of the human body,” and I didn’t think at the time that humans “have a fundamental right to be naked in front of other people,” so I think I was not intentionally dismissed from service as much as simply not chosen.
I tried not to–the judge said I shouldn’t–take my unchosen-ness personally, and went on my merry way, along with the man with rotten teeth who had asked during the jury service orientation what happens if he has a dead car battery and can’t come on a scheduled day. (The court clerk replied, “If you need a ride call me, and I’ll send a sheriff out for you,” and added, “Usually after I say that the response is, ‘Uh, actually, my buddy’s coming for me right now.'”) Unlike me, he had had some history to discuss during jury questioning, something about a misdemeanor involving three unlicensed dogs.
“Did you feel like the court system treated you fairly in that situation?” the prosecuting attorney had asked.
“Oh,” said the man, “I was not the defendant in that case. I was the victim.”
After that day, as the weeks of my service went on and day in court after day in court were canceled, both my worries about missing work and my hopes for dashing jury room deliberation settled into a dull relief at not having to deal with other people’s problems.
Nonetheless, I really wouldn’t mind a congratulatory pepperoni pizza–but my supervisor’s response has left me less than hopeful: “Good luck!” he wrote.
The Economist noted recently that increased American vehicle fuel efficiency and less driving is leaving highways without fuel-tax-generated funding, thereby preventing roadways from being improved.
And things do need untroubling. As the article states, “The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated in 2009 that 36% of America’s major urban highways are congested, costing $78.2 billion each year in wasted time and fuel costs.”
But oh, what good news! The silver lining to road unimprovement is that the fuel purchased for wasting in urban highway congestion will fund infrastructure betterment that will, in the long run….oh, shucks, never mind.
