Insomnia and Facebook Hate

(Strong language is contained herein.  If that bothers you, go elsewhere.)

I wasn't going to write anything anywhere about recent events. It didn't seem that there was anything I could add to the discussion that hadn't been said better by other people.  My Facebook feed is largely split into two camps of people, neither of which seems to be able to understand the other at all.  One camp posts nothing but "strike down all cops" and "all white people are evil" while the other is nothing but "it's mostly your fault."  Both are wearing me slam-damn out, to be honest.  Today, I have started to see a new variation saying, "If you don't post anything (about the shootings by the police), then you must be a racist, and we know it, and we're going to unfriend you now."

Imma call bullshit on all of this.

I haven't written anything because I am numb.  For three days, I have been walking around in a daze wondering what happened to this country.  Last night, I was struggling to get my mind to calm down enough to get some rest when the BBC and CNN apps on my phone started notifying me about Dallas.  After that, I just cried.  There didn't seem to be anything else left possible to do.  Around 1:30, I took some Zzzquil and fell into a nightmare-haunted sleep that made me sicker than no sleep at all would have done.

No matter what might have been going on behind the scenes, I don't think it is possible to say that the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were in any conceivable way legitimate responses to the situations.  Did the two men behave absolutely textbook perfectly when the police showed up?  I don't know.  I haven't watched the videos and will not because I can't carry that around in my head without it destroying me.  I doubt it.  I doubt it was possible.  It sure as hell wouldn't have been for me.  I got stopped for a traffic violation and was shaking like a leaf when the patrolman came up to the car with his hand on his sidearm.  Even though I am a white woman (the opposite demographic from those slain recently), I kept worrying that I wasn't being still enough, that I would do the wrong thing.  When we get scared, we sometimes don't remember the drills we were taught, the advice to keep our hands on the steering wheel, fingers spread.  I will say this, though.  Unless those men took out a gun and pointed it at one of the officers, I cannot see that the officer response was the right one. There had to have been some other path.

My social media feed is filled with posts from former students who are angry and scared.  I think that feeling is totally legitimate.  Every time I think about that little girl watching her father be shot and killed, I want to scream.  That my students have to worry about this, have to read posts on social media, have to listen to elitists who diminish their concerns and say, in essence, the modern version of "well,  you know how it is with *those* people" as if someone's skin color diminishes their value as a human being or their protections under American law, breaks my heart.  One of my precious formers posted simply, "My life matters.  My life matters.  My life matters."  That anyone as bright, capable, charming, and full of potential to do great good things as he is has to say this to himself should break everybody's heart.

This is not my country.  This cannot be my country.  We have to be better than this.

And then there are the police.  Most of the people I know who are a part of law enforcement genuinely want to make people safe and protect them from harm.  Their job is increasingly terrifying.  Heavy weaponry is everywhere.  The most fundamental concept of civilization, an agreement to abide by certain concepts for the safety of everyone, is crumbling as everybody focuses on whatever they can grab for themselves instead.  I can't imagine being police or highway patrol and knowing that I was going to be putting my life in danger every day.  I deeply respect their dedication to protecting us.

That being said, not everybody who is behind a badge is flawless, and we are going to have to accept that and deal with it somehow before all the wheels come off this thing altogether. I have grown up personally acquainted with the idea that law enforcement can be quite a mixed bag of things due to issues of corruption locally.  Every profession has those in it who fail to live up to its demands.  There are teachers who are terminated for varying kinds of misconduct all the time, doctors who lose licenses for addiction or malpractice. Becoming a member of law enforcement does not magically confer perfection any more than becoming a member of any other profession, and while I support them and am grateful beyond belief for the sacrifices they make, I really think we are all going to have to realize that there are problems that must be resolved before the entire system collapses.

And maybe this is the thing that both of these camps on social media are missing.  They are lumping huge swaths of humanity into big, stereotypical groups.  That which is Other is by definition both Wrong and Evil when it is approached this way.  When we start dealing with people on the macro level, we lose the detail that allows us to appreciate each other. It becomes easy to pick up that first stone and fling it at a mass of anonymous faces instead of having to step up to that one individual separately, look him or her in the eye, and take aim. Stop saying "all you people" whether you are pointing a finger at the cops or those who have been shot.  In fact, any time you find yourself thinking something like, "Well, *they're* all...(WHATEVER)," some kind of mental alarm needs to go off.  No group is universally any one thing or another.

Instead, why don't we try, just as an experiment maybe, to say, "If I were in that situation, how would I feel?  What would my reaction be?"  Don't get up on your high-horse saying, "Oh, but that would *never* be me."  Instead, do the cliche and see if you can't walk in those shoes in some degree even for the smallest amount of time. Recover the basic human quality of empathy for another.

Is power being abused?  By some in many places.  Is fear slowly killing us all?  Every damn day.  Certain media outlets stir it up to get ratings.  Politicians use it as a sharpened goad to drive us hither, thither, and yon.   I don't know what the answer is.  People far wiser than I have pondered this for longer than I have been alive, and you see the state we're in. These are upsetting times.  It's okay to be afraid.  It's natural to be upset.  That being said, we cannot keep letting it make us savage toward each other. Appreciate the value of the fragile and irreplaceable humanity around you.  Quit being sure you know what's what.  For the love of the tiny baby Jesus, quit making blanket statements about entire sections of the nation, be it a profession or an ethnicity.

I guess I am going to fall back on an old personal axiom, then.  I've had it up in my classroom for a long time, "Be Nice or Leave."  I'm not going to throw stones or post hostile statuses.  I'm just going to sit over here, grieve for our hurting nation, and pray for some change.  Anyone who might want to join in with that is always welcome.

Oyster Crackers

When I was young, I went on a vacation with C., my best friend.  For some reason, we chose to stay in the room while my parents went out to eat.  We were tired or sunburned or something.  We had been on a semi-disasterous innertube rafting trip on a river in Tennessee, and we were likely exhausted.  I seem to remember a great deal of portage and falling off innertubes.  In any case, it seemed a good idea at the time. 

Only we got hungry.  And it went on so long.

The hotel was near nothing, so walking to a place to eat was impossible.  We looked through the room, but there was nothing and no vending machines.  All we had to eat was a bag of oyster crackers we'd bought to throw at the ducks in the nearby river.  So we'd eat them one at a time, laughing hysterically because there was nothing else to do.  We had no transport, no options.  We just waited, trusting that sooner or later, food would come because we'd been told that it would.

Many hours later, my parents returned, and they'd had quite a lot of trouble finding us (and themselves) food.  In the non-touristy place we were staying, apparently the sidewalks rolled up quite early.  We wound up with a couple of very nasty hamburgers in styrofoam takeaway containers. 

At some point in your life, I am pretty sure most of you, gentle readers, have had this hamburger.  It is the ultimate disappointment.  Dry-hard bun, pitiful cold patty, rubbery technicolor orange cheese, frightning tiny pickles, limp lettuce, and no condiments to speak of.  We ate them because we had no other options.  They weren't what we'd wanted (that restaurant had not been open), but they were what we had, so we made do.

Certain things have happened to me in the last two days that have impressed upon me the notion that I'm still sitting around waiting for things that were promised that just aren't going to come.  I'm still trying to tell myself that I can be content with something that is less than what I really wanted or expected.  I am tired of it.  It's time to do something about it.

I don't know what, and I don't know how yet, but it has been impressed upon me that I must start looking, or all I'm ever going to have are things that do not satisfy me.  Stop-gap has become my whole life.  I'm sure it was a gradual thing, something silent and stealthy slipping up like some form of comfortable quicksand, but this is enough.

I'm putting you on notice, world.  I am done with oyster crackers and piss-poor hamburgers.  I refuse to believe that's all there is.  I refuse to believe that's all I'm worth.  If that's all you can offer me, it's time for you to get to steppin'. 

A Mobile Observation

What does it say about me that it annoys me when radio stations mute minor vulgarities in their songs? I'm listening to Pink Floyd's "Money," and when it got to the "goodie good bullshit" line, they bleeped it. If that word offends you so very much, maybe you should not listen to the song. I find this sort of thing hypocritical and corrosive to the original intent of the artist. Even if they bleep it, we all know what was meant, effectively hearing it in our heads. What's the point?

Well, Now You've Just Pissed Me Off....

The Land Mass thing is everywhere on the web right now.  Some of it is amusing.  One bit of it, though, pushed the big red button.  Fasten a seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

A comment on a friend's FB status about the Land Mass read, "Why SHOULD Mississippi be considered a state?  What has it ever given the US?  LOL"  I started to respond there, but I decided I needed more space than I had and also that I didn't want to scream at the top of my FB lungs.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Are you really that ignorant?

Oh sure, we here in-state gently and not-so-gently mock ourselves, but we know very well that not everything that comes out of here is bad.  While it's okay if we are laughing at ourselves, it's not okay for somebody from the outside to point fingers and make accusations.  It's not that we don't have problems; heaven knows we do.  It's that it's just RUDE, honey.  We may have all kinds of issues, neuroses, and battles, but at least we know not to point fingers.

What then has Mississippi given the US?  Here's the short list:

• Musicians - Marty Stewart, B.B. King, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmie Rogers, Charley Pride, ELVIS, Jimmy Buffett, Robert Johnson, the entire band 3 Doors Down, Leontyne Price, Faith Hill, 
• Writers - William Faulkner, John Grisham, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Nevada Barr, Greg Iles, Thomas Harris, Anne Moody, (and I'll just STOP here.  there are too freaking many.)
• Entertainers - Jim Henson, Sela Ward, James and Robert Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Oprah Winfrey, Diane Ladd
• Athletes - Walter Payton, assorted Mannings, Oil Can Boyd, Brett Favre, and so many others there is just a separate list of them available online
• Art - George Ohr, Walter Inglis Anderson
• Creators - Hartley Peavey, James Hardy, Haller Nutt

There are more.  So many, many more.  Check the PAGES of stuff on Wikipedia for what Mississippi has given to the rest of the country.  Then, if you please, fold your stupid comment in four corners and insert it somewhere where it might remind you not to be so much of what you are next time.

Things They Don't Tell You

Life would be so much easier if people would just TELL you things.  I know experience is supposed to be the best teacher and we all learn better by doing, but some things should not have to be mysteries wrapped up in enigmas wrapped up in things I have suffer and  to go Google to find out about.

Like my recent tetanus shot.  My arm felt like it was going to fall completely off yesterday.  Most of the other symptoms had gotten manageable, but I literally could not raise my arm without it feeling like someone was stabbing me.  It was as if I had a very bad cut and huge stitches through that muscle.  There's a hard place there, too, and it's a little red.  It itches some.

My mind IMMEDIATELY begins to think, "Okay.  This wasn't exactly covered by 'mild irritation at injection site.'  Maybe I need to be worried?  Do I need to be worried?  Is this too much, or is this normal? Am I in the range of symptoms that needs to call the doctor?"

Not wanting to push the panic button, I ignored it most of the day, and, well, did stuff that didn't involve raising that hand.  Or raised it anyway and went, "Owowowowow" in my head.  Finally, though, when I got home, it was so stiff and sore that I decided I would look up what a bad tetanus shot might be like to find out if I needed to be concerned or not.

The answer was a resounding no.  In fact, according to the information I found, tetanus shots are worse for everybody on the second day after.  They can give pain for up to a full week, but day 2 is usually the peak of the agony.  Well...isn't that...nice?  But it did explain what was going on, and I felt better knowing I wasn't about to have some exotic bad reaction to the injection and...explode...or something....

Here's the thing, though.  If apparently everybody has that problem, why didn't the information sheet (front and back, both sides) include that?  If the way to mitigate the pain is ice packs and Tylenol, why isn't that recommended....ANYWHERE?  All the information sheet covers is "You may feel bad. Here's how!"  And then it's vague and scary with its three classes of symptoms.  Be practical.  Be specific.  Tell people, "You're going to feel like a damn Greyhound bus hit you at high speed.  In the arm.  Twice.  It will leave a red spot and a hard place. That's okay.  You're not dying (well, more than usual, anyway). Take some Tylenol.  Put a cold pack on it.  Go to bed.  Get some rest.  And tomorrow?  Hahahahaha.  Tomorrow, well, plan to wear clothing that doesn't go on over your head.  Oh, and we also hope you're not a side-sleeper...."  Sigh.

When Life Is Like a Country Song....

Lied to, cheated, and generally messed around.  By multiple individuals.  Yeah.  That pretty much sums up the week I've had.

Forget this noise.

What hurts the most, I think is that one of the people involved in writing the lyrics of this week, if you will, to stretch the metaphor, is somebody that I was truly fond of and respected.  Now what the hell am I supposed to do with that?  Oh, I am quite sure, based upon the behavior involved, that it does not matter on the other side of the equation.  What do I do with my own disillusionment?  How can I continue to look that person in the eyes now that faith has been broken?  Most especially since I know it does NOT matter on the other side of the equation?

It's not just happening in my little universe, either.  The things I see people doing to each other all around me are insane.  It's like somebody turned a psych ward out and all the crazy people are loose and ravening for blood. (So maybe this is a Pink Floyd song instead....)  In both my professional and my private settings, there are horror stories of actions that have made me sit and stare or laugh incredulously because what else can you do?  Cry maybe?  It's happening everywhere.  Everywhere.

 The vast majority of individuals seem to think that as long as they want to do it and nobody is there to stop them from it forcibly, it's fine-and-jim-dandy to proceed with any action whatsoever. The only rule to be respected is rule of brute force.  "If you can't make me NOT do it, then get out of my way."  Shakespeare might have said it as, "The weakest go to the wall."

What gives people the idea that they have the right to be utterly horrible as if it is some sort of birthright? If somebody treated them with half the disdain, half the lack of respect and basic kindness ONCE that they casually dish out on a regular basis, they would fold up like wet paper dolls and disappear. They would run crying to mama, scream of injustice to the heavens, expect better treatment immediately.

By God, if you expect to get it yourself, you should give it in return.  In fact, step out and offer it first.    Otherwise, when the insanity comes around hunting for its little taste of you, and it will, oh, it will, do not be surprised when hands are not lifted to soothe or save.  Life has teeth and claws and applies them indiscriminately.  If we don't all hold each other up, help each other bandage the wounds it leaves, none of us have a chance.

really? REALLY?

Things that happened lately that have made me say the above either out loud or in my head:

• the singing of "Brick House" by a student when I slipped my sweater off today because I was hot (I'm sure this was neither a complement nor an homage to my beauty since I look like a school marm from the nineteen teens.....This just made me roll my eyes... Just what I need -- verbal irony.)
• the ringing of my alarm clock after only four hours of sleep.  I was NOT prepared for today.  
• getting behind the third slow-moving thing on the way to work this morning which caused me to be late.  Again.  For the second time on duty week.  (MOVE...Get that thing...out...of...)
• coming home after leaving Roux out just once to see what she'd do to find she'd shredded every single thing she could get her teeth into in a gleeful festival of destruction all over the living room
• having to use the Porta-Potty at Prairie Arts and finding that to add insult to injury the door had no lock  (What?  Why?  I can't...even....  I have quite literally seen facilities consisting of holes in the ground that were less heinous.)
• trying to print from a non-saveable PDF application and having it screw up, disappear, screw up, disappear, screw up, disappear....

Untying the Knot

It's the last day of the school year, and since I've been sitting here waiting for the big "you can go home," I've had a lot of time to think today.  Lots of what you might call personal reflection. You see, I've had one absolute hell of a year.  There have been people and things that have helped me survive it.  But then....  I've realized that I'm done with certain things in my life.  No.  "Done" just doesn't quite cover it.  Actually, I'm fairly pissed about these things.   Here's the list in no specific order, and no, really, it doesn't all or even mostly have to do with work:

• feeling bad about things I didn't start and can't do anything about
• people who only show up when they want something from me
• being so stressed out all the time that it makes me physically ill

It's time to clean house.  Fasten your seatbelt.  I need to get some crap cleaned out of my life.

Songs I Hate #1

"Love the One You're With" -- Stephen Stills

"If you can't be with the one you love, honey / love the one you're with / love the one you're with...."

I was driving home today and this song came on the radio.  I usually just make a face and switch the channel or make fun of it by singing in an irritating voice, but today I decided to blog it when I got home.  Thus commences my list of songs I hate.  Don't expect to see a lot of these or to see them pop up sequentially.....

What bothers me about this song is the whole message of it.  It basically reduces love to a reaction to boredom. To me, it's like the guy is saying, "Hey, I'm horny and I'm bored.  Oh, man!  Bummer!  My sweetie isn't here!  What now?" (Looks around, sees miscellaneous woman, shrugs)  "You'll do...."  And if that isn't just the very SOUL of romance.....

I don't find the lyrics freewheeling and fun.  I find them stupid and demeaning to everything love is supposed to be about.  How about this:  "If you can't be with the one you love....F'ing WAIT."  How about that?  Because call me crazy, but last time I looked up a definition of love in the book, that's what it sort of said, chief.

/rant

More War

I can't watch the news today.  I just can't bring myself to click or view or even scan a headline.  CNN is sending its little updates to my phone in urgent email dings, and I want to throw my trusty iPhone across the room, hide it in the back of my closet, run away from it. 

Yesterday, when I came stumbling out of the MRI, my mother and another woman were staring at the obligatory waiting room televisions with something like dread on their faces.  It took me some time to clue in to the rhetoric falling from the Commander in Chief's lips, but I put together with the help of the scrolling titles and labels that he was talking about Libya, saying that America would not lead a military action, that it was not our place to do that. 

Today, as I woke and checked my email, the first messages that greet my eyes tell me that we are now engaged in bombing there. 

I cannot say that the people of Libya don't deserve a government that does not oppress them.  I cannot say that their current leadership is a good or just one.  I just have to wonder why, when my own nation's military is dedicated to conflicts in at least two other active zones of conflict, we have stepped into a third.  Is there nobody else in the entire world who can do these things?  (Notice I am not getting into the issue of whether or not it was necessary or why we might really be doing this.  I am not going to turn over that rock and watch all the little philosophical debates run around....)

I think about every single young man and woman who graduates out of my classes and goes into the military, every person I know who serves as a career part of the armed forces in some way, and every time we lift another banner, sally forth in another grand crusade, the chances of those people coming home in a flag-draped box goes up again, and again, and again.  I know they know that when they sign up.  I know they want to serve God, Country, and the Corps (or the Army, or whathaveyou), but I just can't help but feeling that this loyalty, honestly given and rare in this day and age, is being managed badly. 

Just because you CAN do a thing does not mean that you SHOULD do a thing, does not mean that it is WISE to do a thing.  I think that all too often, when history looks back on war, on the devastation that comes from it, the sons and fathers, the mothers and daughters who will never come home again, on the broken countrysides and the scarred landscapes, I think that the reasons why they start frequently begin to look like things that should have been taken care of some other way.

I have said it before, and I will say it again.  Those rabid dogs who want to fight need to be taken and given a very sharp stick and put in a deep pit with slick, high sides.  Let them stab each other to their hearts' content.   Let them get as much blood and death and violence as they can possibly need.  Let them howl and rage and rip and one another until there is a clear victor.  Then put that bastard down.  Let the rest of us get on with living.  We have enough other problems out here among us to deal with without the warmongers adding to it, I think.

The King's Speech

We have but one regular movie theater here in Podunk.  Its usual bill of fare includes anything with "Jackass" or "Saw" in its title and all things put out by Pixar.  Basically, if it's animated, if people get shot or punch each other, or if the plot took less than fifteen minutes to dash off, you can be sure it will be in heavy rotation in our cinema. 

I'm sure those films have a place.  They are frequently big box office hits, after all.  Some of them manage to be charming, entertaining ways to spend a little bit of time, have an evening out with friends (or a date...I seem to remember that being a use for them, too), or blur away a little of the world outside.  None of those things in and of themselves are bad. 

But a film can be more.  It can be more than catharsis or slapstick jokes.  It can be more than an excuse to hold a hand in the dark or have a big screen babysitter for a couple of hours.  Really great film can show us something about ourselves, about the human condition, can inspire in the way that great literature does since they pull from the same core of experience and leave the viewer with the sense that he or she is better for having seen it in some way. 

I think this type of film needs a chance to be seen here in Podunk, too.  Our local theater owner does not show these, though.  One usually has to go to another city more than an hour away to see movies that are "arty."  Ironically, one of these, The King's Speech, just won the Oscar for Best Picture and it never even played here.  Imagine that.  A movie the industry thinks is so important that it was given its very highest prize (more than one, actually) and our little movie theater owners in their divine wisdom said, "Nope.  Not any good.  Not bringing it here."  Fortunately, I got a chance to see it today at the beautiful old movie palace downtown.  The management there agrees with me that people deserve a chance to see something other than the trite, the cliched, and the predictable.

The King's Speech is indeed a movie that leaves its viewers, if they are paying attention in the least, anyway, better.  I don't think it can help but do so.  As the story unfolds, as the characters unfold, we are drawn in; we feel with them.  It is a story about fear and conquering it.  It doesn't show that as something that is a simple process.  It doesn't show it as a one-time thing, a switch-click solution with a shining hero who has nothing left to overcome at the end.  Instead, it shows a beautifully complicated and layered quest that continues, and in that perseverance, nobility above and beyond anything bestowed by birth or title is revealed.

I will order this movie when it comes out next month on DVD.  I think it is going to become a favorite of mine.  It just made me feel good to see it.  I can't imagine why our local theater made the decision not to field it, why they thought that it would not fare well here.  I can't imagine anyone anywhere not responding to the hope that is in that film.  Of course, if all you want in a movie is big explosions or gratuitous nudity, I suppose it might not be your cup of tea.  In that case, they will, of course, be glad to take your money across town....

The Nutcracker

I hate it when they don't do Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker right.   I hate it when they leave out characters, delete scenes, add new music, take portions away, and get "clever" with it in general.  He knew better than you.  He wrote it.  Dance the thing the way he told you to.  Not all the dances belong to Clara.  Not all the dances belong to the Prince.  COME ON.  There is actually a storyline to this ballet....

The music of The Nutcracker is some of my favorite.  I wait until the holidays to listen to it, but parts of it are in my head all year long.  I don't go see amateur versions of it put on by Mrs. So-and-So's ballet school because they pain me.  I am not a ballet snob, and although I took dance for 9 years, I do not pretend to be able to tell you what most of the moves on the stage are, so this isn't the reason I avoid grade-schoolers putting on The Nutcracker.  There's just something about a whole herd of toddlers in tutus bumping into each other that I don't find endearing, at least not in this situation. 

The best version I ever saw of it was done at IU.  It was a co-production of the School of Music and the ballet folk (I can't remember what school they fit under or if they have their own school...I think they do).  The sets and costumes were all made in-house as well by students, and so you really got to see fantastic stuff.  There was none of this holding back that I'm seeing in the version I'm currently watching that is irritating me so.  It was lovely, opulent, and everything that a ballet that is supposed to take place in a dream should be.  It followed the storyline.  There was imagination, but nobody felt the need to say, "Hey, there's this story that's a classic, but I'm going to throw it out the window, do my own thing, and just keep the name, ok? Thanks."

Don't think that I don't like variations.  One of my favorite adaptations is The Hard Nut.  It is as far from "tradition" as you can get, and yet, the story is preserved.  Here, there IS no storyline.  Anything could be happening except for the slightly scary-looking Chinese dancers.  They've lost the best thing about The Nutcracker: the rich fairy tale.  I don't like it.  Call me grumpy.  Call me narrowminded.  That's fine.  Just give me back a version that, at least in its most basic parts, follows the story!

Now.  I know you care deeply and are moved.  If you are still reading this at all, that is.  /rant

Two Faces

I hate it when people say one thing to one group of people and turn around and say another to me.  I know that such posturing and politico-schmoozing is the grease that keeps the wheels of industry, etc. turning, but it enrages me when someone pretends to be an ally or a friend and turns around and goes on the attack. 

Do they think these things don't come out?  Do they think people don't eventually compare notes and discover the discrepancies?  Maybe they just don't care.

More respect is gained if somebody will just be their honest self.  I mean, come on, love me, hate me, but don't pretend.  I hate that crap.  There's nothing genuine in all that.

I do understand the need for politesse and diplomacy.  However, as far as I'm concerned, diplomacy does not involve saying things that are totally opposite just because you happen to be with somebody else.  I guess I'm never going to understand this phenomenon, and I should probably just file it in my "to ignore" basket, but it's wearing on me greatly right now.

Think for Yourself

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.  ~John Aikin

Banned Book Week just ended yesterday, and today there is a notice in a North Carolina paper about a church that wants to burn all other versions of the Bible except for the King James version and "evil" books by Billy Graham, etc., to cleanse the world of "satanic literature."  I don't know whether to cry, scream, or sit down and just put my head in my hands and give up.

Censorship of books, wherever it happens, is wrong.  If you don't want to read it, leave it alone.  If you don't want your children to read it, teach them your beliefs and trust that they will leave it alone, too.  Don't presume, however, that you have the right to tell somebody ELSE how to think about things.  There is danger in that.  That's how dictatorships get started.  That's how dystopian literature becomes reality.

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, said, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."  I think that those who seek power for the sake of power, those 1984-esque  people who are not mere myth or paranoid fantasy, know this.  Whether they are wearing the mask of religious fervor or political righteousness, the people who take away the first book are setting a precedent, knocking over the first domino that will allow the others to go, too. 

Maybe you don't personally care about that first book.  Maybe you don't know anything about it.  Maybe you do, but you don't like to look at it.  Maybe it blatantly offends you, in fact.  Be careful, though.  Once somebody has been able to reach out their hand and take away that book because "it offends," something you hold dear might come under fire next.  It's a very slippery slope when value judgments are made on the basis of something so subjective.


I'm not saying there are no lines and no limits ever.  I don't think that your freedom should ever be taken at the cost of someone else.  Things like child pornography and the language of hate are always harmful to others.  I know there are those who disagree with this and say there should be no regulation at all, but I can't believe that the original ideas of free speech included a protection for things that damage others, use them and make them less than human.  


Therein lies the distinction between the books that people are trying to ban and these other things to me.  The literature is trying very much to explore what humanity is, dig down through the layers of this life, this world, this condition of being alive, even the bits that are not pleasant.  Perhaps especially the bits that aren't pleasant.  Some of the literature that people have tried to ban most frequently takes hold of some of life's toughest situations and looks them directly in their blood-shot eyes, tries to explain them honestly, tries to force people to look at the ugliness and brutality that all-too-frequently creeps into every life despite the most careful steps taken in prevention.

I think that is why those who want to ban these hate them so much.  It makes them face realities they want to hide, makes them realize that not all the gated communities in the world can keep pain away forever.  These books are the anti-TV, the anti-pop music.  "Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled 'This could change your life,'"  said Helen Exley.  Change is always hard.  We're creatures of inertia, comfortable in our little ruts.  Let's hope we can find a way to be less fearful of alternate ideas, though, before we wake up and find that they have all slipped through our fingers when we weren't paying attention.

What Were You Thinking?

Much in the news recently was Terry Jones whose church was going to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 with a mass burning of the Koran.  When I first heard of this, I was, as I seem so often to be when I hear of horrifying things, in my car on my way to work. 

My first thought was disbelief.  How can anybody believe this kind of behavior solves anything anymore?  How can anybody believe that this sort of thing is what God wants his people to be doing?  I read up on the situation a little, and Jones claims it's all an attempt to get the NY imam in charge of opening an Islamic center near Ground Zero to talk to him.  

I wonder if it ever occurred to him that this behavior might be counterproductive.  The Koran is venerated in Islam, and the proper treatment of it is tantamount.  Why would any Muslim even want to come to talk to someone who would threaten to debase it?  It would be like someone crawling up on the altar of Jones's church and using the bathroom there.

God never called for Christians to go ye therefore and be offensive to everybody around them.  He never told his people to walk out into the peoples of the world and slap them in the face rudely, act superior, and deliberately do things that were acts of aggression and provocation.  He told us to be mirrors of himself, and since God is Love, I think actions like Jones which are all about threat and hatred are missing the mark.  Wars start because of actions like his. Lives are lost because of actions like this.  Hate grows because of actions like this.  People go further away from God because of actions like this. 

Jones backed off.  He got his fifteen minutes of media attention, which, probably, was all he was ever after to begin with.  I just can't help but feel, however, that harm was done just by the suggestion.  As a nation, as a world, as a humanity, we're now just a little further apart that we were before.  I'm sure it grieves the heart of God.

No! Child Left Behind

As I drove home today, I was turning over a puzzle that I can't solve:  how to help some of my lowest-performing students reach the levels demanded of them by standardized testing mandated by state and federal law.  These students work, for the most part, very diligently, but due to circumstances beyond their control, they may never make it to what the state and the fed in their almighty wisdom have said is necessary to get that most basic of tools needed to have any sort of success in life, a high school diploma. 

I'm tired and I'm confused.  What chance have these kids got?  I stood beside one as she took her test today, and she was working so hard, so very, very hard, giving me everything she had.  I don't know that it's going to be enough.  What am I going to do?  How am I going to bridge that gap?  I can adapt, accommodate, adjust, and basically rewrite everything I do; I can bend myself into a teacher pretzel, but I don't have magic.  I'm so afraid that I'm not going to be anything like enough when it all is said and done.  I'm afraid that I'm going to fail them.

It's a terrible feeling.  My day is split between student who will go on to be the proverbial doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, who will blaze brilliant swaths through their chosen fields and trades, and then these little lost ones who are slowly slipping through the cracks of society.  Why can't there be a place for all of them to be okay?

The Amazing Disappearing Past

I went out to take pictures today.  That Nikon calls to me almost constantly.  I had the same issue when I lived in Japan.  Of course there, you could pretty much close your eyes, point the camera in a random direction and push the button and get something interesting on film.  I routinely just got on a train and went on photo trips.  If I also came back with some pottery in my backpack, too, well, that was just a hazard of living in Japan, wasn't it?  I have tons of photos from Japan.  Travel was easy, history was everywhere, and the sorts of things I enjoy photographing, the old, the odd, the rare, and the sacred, abounded.

Here, it's a little trickier.  The South is like Japan in so many ways that it actually becomes frightening after awhile.  That comparison is a whole "nother" blog, though, so I'll leave it alone for now.  Suffice it to say, it should in theory at least be easy to find the sorts of things I appreciate shooting here, too.  But, outside of a few things that I knew I would be able to get because they are "Historic Landmarks" protected by megabucks and the strong, if largely inactive, arm of the Federal government, it hasn't been.  I noticed today that the things I love are disappearing.   Things I should have been able to find, signs, whole buildings even, are gone now.  Even here, in my lovely backwards rural South, everything is becoming homogenized, streamlined, sanitized.  Progress is marching forward with its steel-spiked jackboots.

The town I work in has an absolute embarrassment of history in it.  At one time, it was the largest city in the Southeastern United States.  It was a rival to, and even at certain brief moments in its glory days, surpassed, Atlanta.  I don't think one in five people here know that.  Traces of it, only traces are visible.  Actually, there is a lot of it left, much that could be unearthed, restored, reclaimed, shown off, revitalized as so many places I've been are doing.  Here, though, nobody much except for a local university seems to be interested in that in a big way.  It's puzzling.  What the hell are they planning to do with all that, then? 

The downtown area is chock-full of buildings that should be chock-full of businesses, professionals, restaurants, and so on. Yet, the businesses in the downtown area are ephemeral.  Very few of them manage to stay open long.  Just as one begins to get attached, they disappear.  There are a few foundation businesses down there that have been open forever.  They cling with tenacious determination, but even they are not immune.  I noticed a sign on one of the oldest in town, in business for 185 years, that they are "quitting business," their massive four-story building now going to be another of the blank-eyed ghosts staring out in quiet desperation.

I don't know much about business to be sure.  I will be the first to tell you that I have no head for money at all.  Look at the sad tragedy that is my personal finances.  However, I do know this:  every town that I've ever been in that has been vibrant, active, and pulling itself out of what I loosely term "urban slump" for lack of something more creative has been making the effort to do something with its past. and not just slam a giant wrecking ball through it or leave it to fall down bit by bit.  There has to be some solution.  Otherwise, how are all these other places doing it?

The Japanese valued both progress and tradition.  They might have a 500 year old temple nestled next to a highrise apartment complex that was just put up this year.  They know how to balance both and are interested in the preservation of both, at least as far as physical things go, exceedingly well.  They understand that the past helps to define a people, that it is worth looking at whether it is bad or good.

I don't think we do that as well here.  I don't know if it's because we have so much less history, because we have history that is full of so much strife (although, granted, Japan's has not been a cakewalk), or because we are still trying to figure out what our working definition of ourselves is, something Japan pretty much had nailed down a couple of centuries before we sewed together the first flag that flew over our infant nation on the day of its birth.  We frequently have to have our own history pointed out to us.  Things reach a point of total ruination before somebody sweeps in to "save" it or form some kind of restoration society to preserve it. Meanwhile, everybody sort of sits around going, "Gosh, that old thing was important/valuable/nice?  Who knew?  We were going to put the cows/tractor/hay in it/burn it down." 

I just hope we can find a way to reach that balance here.  Not just for the photographs or the economy, either.  Mostly I hope so because I think that one day, if we keep going the way we are, we're going to wind up wanting some of this stuff back again, and it's going to be gone for good.  Reconstructed history is nice, as far as it goes, but nothing compares to the reality of saving the authentic thing, especially when it's so possible to do if someone will just trouble to take the time and effort to imagine the beauty of it.

Death at Prayer

What kind of god do you believe in if you can go into a place where people are at prayer, and are indeed praying to the exact same god you claim, and you can cut them down without mercy?  What kind of religion is it that you have if you can go out into the streets and see that violence and not have your stomach turn, your very sense of being cry out to the heavens for justice, if you can offer sweets to those with the guns over the still-warm corpses, pat them on the shoulders and tell them that they are doing a righteous deed?

Has there ever been a major atrocity that we've perpetrated upon each other that wasn't at its base somehow related to religion?  And doesn't it grieve the loving heart of God as nothing else possibly could when we look at each other and are so blinded by differences that mean nothing, nothing, by colors, by sounds, by slight variations in shapes, that we become afraid of each other and allow that fear to turn into violence?  Are we ever going to recognize that we are much more the same that different, ever going to be able to rejoice in those differences instead of try to make them a matter of superiority or inferiority? 

I'm sad tonight and angry.  I watched the news, and I shouldn't have.  Too many blind people making too much horror today.

The Little Things

It's amazing how little we pay attention to the tiny things that drive the modern world, how much we take them for granted.  This piece of jewelry from beadworkbyamanda on Etsy is made from a circuit board, and although it is basically the recycling of something that is scrap, waste, it is art, lovely, elegant, beautiful in its lines and colors.  Why don't we pay attention to the beauty that is beneath the surface of things?

I have always been curious about the inside.  Part of that undoubtedly comes from the fact that from the time I was small, I watched my father working on electronics, opening them up, pulling them apart and putting them back together again.  I have bits and pieces of them that I found pretty or fascinating around the house from old models. 

The interest about the inside, though, for me goes deeper than just the machines we use.  I am also fascinated by the interior of us.  I was a biological sciences major going into college because I wanted to know more and more about how life functioned.  The more I knew, the more I was in a state of constant humble wonder at the miraculous majesty of God's design.  Although my career ran more to words and their internal workings than nature's internal gearings ultimately, I still love to read about it on a layman's level.

We need to pay attention more.  Whether it's taking the time to read up on the latest natural phenomenon, to look at the inside of an old-fashioned pocket watch when the opportunity presents itself, or to try understand the complexities of our own health issues when we face them, I believe Bacon's old axiom, "Knowledge is power."  Even more importantly and equally true, though, Knowledge is profound enjoyment, and there's little enough of that in the world.  We should seize that with both hands anytime we see it glimmering before us. 

Claws

I went to a meeting recently expecting an informative presentation of matters of interest.  What I got instead was a chance to hear my school get slammed through the floor for an hour and fifteen minutes. I've just about had enough.

It's easy to take shots at someone when they're down.  It's easy to see some person with a problem you don't personally struggle with, have maybe never struggled with, and point your finger, smirk to yourself, whisper catty little comments behind your hand.  What's not easy, what is in fact bone-crushingly hard at times, is to get off your backside, out of your comfort zone, and turn that pointing finger into a helping hand. 

It's the old Good Samaritan parable all over again.  This one is too busy, this one won't dirty holy hands, this one is happy to see the downfall as it happens because of some old personal grudge long-held and carefully cherished.  Who is going to be the one who stops even if their clothes get a little muddy or bloody?  Who is going to be willing to leave the country club bar and do instead? Who is going to be the one to let old petty conflicts pass and look at the greater good in the present?

I'm tired.  Mortally so.  I love my school.  I love my kids.  I believe in both fervently.  Am I blind to the fact that there are problems?  Absolutely not.  I'll tell you this for nothing, though.  I'm just about done with polite smiles and socially-gracious responses to those who seem to glory in our struggles and try to push us face-down in the mud.  The claws are going to come out.  I just can't manufacture it much longer.