Generally I try to avoid turning this space into a blog about myself. When it is about me there's great care taken to remove any distinguishing 'I'. However, in a fit of Spring fever (which may be the source of newly discovered allergies for me) here's a break from the usual and a personal update.
I am fucked.
Like so many others, I need a job. Problem is, I don't know where to get said job. Everyone gives the same advice, namely to just get one anywhere. I then tell them the possibilities (New Orleans?) and they advise me against places. This has me worried.
Since I'm young and in transition the US is open. Of all the states I think there are roughly 16 I'd be happy to live in: Hawaii, California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Baltimore, Delaware, Virginia and Washington D.C. The rest have too much snow. I could stand to live in: Colorado, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Georgia, Tennessee, Wyoming, Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois. Absolutely unacceptable: Michigan, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kentucky, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana or Minnesota, West Virginia, Iowa, Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho, Wisconsin and Alaska.
The problem is that these states aren't simple. The cost-effective states don't have jobs. The jobs are in my forbidden states. My friends and family are in neither. I'm afflicted with that old dilemma, we've all had it, where I simultaneously have too many choices to decide and not enough options.
This is compacted by three things: certification, recommendation, and a portfolio. Certification is different state to state. It's similar for most, but there's paper work and waiting periods and such for all of them. Recommendations, increasingly, are asked to be submitted with cover letter and resume. This is obnoxious since those gracious enough to do a cover letter haven't agreed to send me umpteen copies. That means open letter instead of closed, and that means I'll only be able to send out a very limited number of apps in the first place. Finally, although not directly job related, I'm working on my Masters teaching portfolio, which is very long and time consuming, and due in two weeks.
I am, as a suspension cable would say, stressed.
* * *
I am good.
Life is going pretty darn well for me at the moment, for a number of reasons. Unlike many others, I have guaranteed shelter for the next few months. I have food. I have warm clothes as I hear the rain drench my vehicle outside. My security is assured.
My standard of living and comfort are far superior to many other places. It's slightly better than: Saudi Arabia, France, South Korea, Austria, Canada, Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Oman, Singapore, Spain and Brunei. It is far better than: Brazil, China, Mexico, Cameroon, Bahamas, Chile, Lithuania, Costa Rica, Lebanon, Jamaica, Namibia, Russia, Turkey, South Africa, Uzbekistan and Syria. My life would be utterly novel in: Liberia, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Uganda, Mali, Angola, Haiti, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, Yemen, Rwanda, Mozambique and Vanuatu.
The advantages are that I'm an American, middle class, educated, healthy, and intelligent. For more spurious but unfortunately valid appraisal, I'm also male, attractive, heterosexual and white. These latter qualities aren't actual qualities, just characteristics. But to many, they are 'quality' characteristics.
Chances for success in life are three-fold: international status, upbringing, and motivation. My international status is the fact that I'm an American, and we are still, for all fears, the number one country in the world. The upbringing is that list of features, part which I was born with and part which I acquired up to this point, that prepare me for power, money and success. Motivation, which doesn't properly fit into the latter, is the knowledge that I will do well, and have safety nets of loving caring people to help me should I stumble and fall.
I am, as St. Paul would say, blessed.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Here's One Way to Measure a Vacation...
Weds: Pork in garlic with Chinese broccoli, a jackfruit smoothie. Hot chocolate flight, dessert sampler: cheesecake, whoopie pies, smores, sorbet, mousse, etc.
Thurs: Clam chowder, pepperoni pizza, apple juice. Ma Po tofu, iced tea, dessert sampler: tiramisu, cheesecake, chocolate cake, red velvet cake, apple pie, etc.
Fri: Sushi: inari, unagi, tamago, ebi, avocado and California roll, etc., iced tea. Cornbread, lobster ravioli, lemonade. Mate ice cream.
Sat: Steak and eggs with toast, milk, oj, and homefries. Gnocchi with sausage, scallops, dessert trifecta: panna cotta with blueberries, apple crisp, brown butter tart, water.
Sun: Crabcakes, fried potatoes, lemonade.
Thurs: Clam chowder, pepperoni pizza, apple juice. Ma Po tofu, iced tea, dessert sampler: tiramisu, cheesecake, chocolate cake, red velvet cake, apple pie, etc.
Fri: Sushi: inari, unagi, tamago, ebi, avocado and California roll, etc., iced tea. Cornbread, lobster ravioli, lemonade. Mate ice cream.
Sat: Steak and eggs with toast, milk, oj, and homefries. Gnocchi with sausage, scallops, dessert trifecta: panna cotta with blueberries, apple crisp, brown butter tart, water.
Sun: Crabcakes, fried potatoes, lemonade.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Books!
As a product of bibliophile I have come to possess the gene that allows one to harbor a deep love of books.
In actuality I must credit whoever taught me to read, and those teachers who forced me to do so with continual regularity. Reading, and the love of books which accompanies it, is taught, not innate.
Alongside this love our time is a time of lists and list-making. I have commented elsewhere on this phenomenon, and the drastic ramifications of a society so constructed. What follows is not a justification or exemplification of our society and time, as I hope none of my work is, but is, instead, merely a product of it.
So here are 10 books everyone should read (but haven't been forced to already).
1. Don Quixote, Cervantes. Often called the "alpha and omega" of the novel form it wrote, and broke, all the rules. The gallant stick-insect on his nag Rociante fights off windmills, tries for a young disreputable girl's heart, eventually teams up with Sancho Panza to go righting all manner of wrongs and injustice. A friend of mine once quipped, in reference to the knight, "It would have been better if he were right."
Yet for all of these delights Quixote does not live up to its title of the Greatest Novel of All Time. For that treat you have to read the transition from the first to the second half, for the mother of all metafiction moments.
2. Ficciones, Borges. The short stories of Jorge Borges are an incomparable treat from the annals of world literature. Borges, for my money, was the world's greatest short story author for consistency, ingenuity, creativity and language. His topics shift from Argentinean gauchos to metaphysical libraries and Arab scholarship. Quite simply the master of the genre.
3. Watchmen, Moore. It would be easy to write this off as a product of the hype of the recent cinematic release, which, most parties will agree, earned a critic's B-. Yet this book is tremendously enjoyable and important for a comic-conscious nation. Tackling huge themes of morality and justice while also grappling with issues of American consumerism, the Cold War a variety of other sociological observations Watchmen turns a fun house mirror on our society and challenges us to laugh at what we see.
4. Three Seductive Ideas, Kagan. Non-fiction, especially of the academic variety, tends to present diminishing returns. The further in the more difficult it is to keep interest. Not so with Kagan's Three Seductive Ideas, the best book on developmental psychology out there. He handles three ideas we have largely accepted regarding how we grow up and takes note on how these ideas are not only faulty but also dangerous assumptions: infant determinism, the pleasure principle, and the ability to measure emotion, and more earth-shaking, intelligence. This will undoubtedly be hailed as a classic as it gains readership.
5. The Stranger, Camus. "Mama died today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I can't remember." So begins one of the great works of the 20th century, a stream of consciousness that is coherent and invigorating telling a story of a man's existential coming-to-terms with self. Far more readable, and, indeed, a true pleasure to read, compared to some of Sartre's fictions. It is the necessary reflection on the philosophy alongside...
6. The Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky. Gogol was funnier, Tolstoy was the greater author, but Dostoevsky in this slim volume best captures the complexities and paradoxes of his time and the modern world. While Gogol could parody these bureaucratic and social upheavals with ghosts and noses that run away to become ministers, Dostoevsky's main character actually feels these changes personally, strongly, and painfully.
7. The Divine Comedy, Dante. At least the Inferno. Technically, this may be the greatest work ever written. The depth, complexity, and simply staggering size of the undertaking in part distance readers rather than draw them in. A good, annotated edition, such as Musa's, will help accompany the wary reader alongside the pilgrim and Virgil in their descent.
8. The Clouds, Aristophanes. There is a tendency in casual readers to equate age with uninteresting. After all, what relevance can a story like Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, lampooning the trends ans sacred cows of the time, have on us today? The genre which suffers the most within this neglect is comedy. And, to be fair, comedy often does not age well.
Not so Aristophane's 2,000+ year old play that makes fun of the pretensions of philosophy, Socrates, how to write a play, and what comedy even is. Again, I show my bias towards the meta, delighting in the fact that Aristophanes writes himself in as a character in his own play, addressing the audience in a formal speech telling them why his play his best. The ending, too, is a masterwork of comic genius.
9. Silent Spring, Carson. The now-classic book is more revolutionary than many give credit. On the surface it is a work which addresses the dangers of DDT and the ramifications of humans role messing around with the ecosystem. Written so as to be easily digestible to the layman, Carson's work is, in fact, far more than a warning or argument against spraying crops. It stands as one of, if not the first, work that directly states that the supposed benefits of our scientific progress aren't actually beneficial, moreover, that they are dangerous. The ramifications of such a realization require thought-provoking contemplation, if understood.
10. The New Testament. I think if more people actually read this a lot of the world's problems would be cleared up. A tremendous number of Christians spread a message of intolerance. Perhaps, if they read Jesus' teachings, they would realize that Jesus communed with lepers and prostitutes. Perhaps, if they read the Gospels, they'd understand that the apparent discrepancy between the New and Old testaments is one where the New, with its message of love and peace, supersedes the Old. If more Christians studied and read about Christ they may start to act more like him, rather than dividing and persecuting the human race and those who don't agree with them. On second thought, perhaps this should be first on the list...
In actuality I must credit whoever taught me to read, and those teachers who forced me to do so with continual regularity. Reading, and the love of books which accompanies it, is taught, not innate.
Alongside this love our time is a time of lists and list-making. I have commented elsewhere on this phenomenon, and the drastic ramifications of a society so constructed. What follows is not a justification or exemplification of our society and time, as I hope none of my work is, but is, instead, merely a product of it.
So here are 10 books everyone should read (but haven't been forced to already).
1. Don Quixote, Cervantes. Often called the "alpha and omega" of the novel form it wrote, and broke, all the rules. The gallant stick-insect on his nag Rociante fights off windmills, tries for a young disreputable girl's heart, eventually teams up with Sancho Panza to go righting all manner of wrongs and injustice. A friend of mine once quipped, in reference to the knight, "It would have been better if he were right."
Yet for all of these delights Quixote does not live up to its title of the Greatest Novel of All Time. For that treat you have to read the transition from the first to the second half, for the mother of all metafiction moments.
2. Ficciones, Borges. The short stories of Jorge Borges are an incomparable treat from the annals of world literature. Borges, for my money, was the world's greatest short story author for consistency, ingenuity, creativity and language. His topics shift from Argentinean gauchos to metaphysical libraries and Arab scholarship. Quite simply the master of the genre.
3. Watchmen, Moore. It would be easy to write this off as a product of the hype of the recent cinematic release, which, most parties will agree, earned a critic's B-. Yet this book is tremendously enjoyable and important for a comic-conscious nation. Tackling huge themes of morality and justice while also grappling with issues of American consumerism, the Cold War a variety of other sociological observations Watchmen turns a fun house mirror on our society and challenges us to laugh at what we see.
4. Three Seductive Ideas, Kagan. Non-fiction, especially of the academic variety, tends to present diminishing returns. The further in the more difficult it is to keep interest. Not so with Kagan's Three Seductive Ideas, the best book on developmental psychology out there. He handles three ideas we have largely accepted regarding how we grow up and takes note on how these ideas are not only faulty but also dangerous assumptions: infant determinism, the pleasure principle, and the ability to measure emotion, and more earth-shaking, intelligence. This will undoubtedly be hailed as a classic as it gains readership.
5. The Stranger, Camus. "Mama died today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I can't remember." So begins one of the great works of the 20th century, a stream of consciousness that is coherent and invigorating telling a story of a man's existential coming-to-terms with self. Far more readable, and, indeed, a true pleasure to read, compared to some of Sartre's fictions. It is the necessary reflection on the philosophy alongside...
6. The Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky. Gogol was funnier, Tolstoy was the greater author, but Dostoevsky in this slim volume best captures the complexities and paradoxes of his time and the modern world. While Gogol could parody these bureaucratic and social upheavals with ghosts and noses that run away to become ministers, Dostoevsky's main character actually feels these changes personally, strongly, and painfully.
7. The Divine Comedy, Dante. At least the Inferno. Technically, this may be the greatest work ever written. The depth, complexity, and simply staggering size of the undertaking in part distance readers rather than draw them in. A good, annotated edition, such as Musa's, will help accompany the wary reader alongside the pilgrim and Virgil in their descent.
8. The Clouds, Aristophanes. There is a tendency in casual readers to equate age with uninteresting. After all, what relevance can a story like Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, lampooning the trends ans sacred cows of the time, have on us today? The genre which suffers the most within this neglect is comedy. And, to be fair, comedy often does not age well.
Not so Aristophane's 2,000+ year old play that makes fun of the pretensions of philosophy, Socrates, how to write a play, and what comedy even is. Again, I show my bias towards the meta, delighting in the fact that Aristophanes writes himself in as a character in his own play, addressing the audience in a formal speech telling them why his play his best. The ending, too, is a masterwork of comic genius.
9. Silent Spring, Carson. The now-classic book is more revolutionary than many give credit. On the surface it is a work which addresses the dangers of DDT and the ramifications of humans role messing around with the ecosystem. Written so as to be easily digestible to the layman, Carson's work is, in fact, far more than a warning or argument against spraying crops. It stands as one of, if not the first, work that directly states that the supposed benefits of our scientific progress aren't actually beneficial, moreover, that they are dangerous. The ramifications of such a realization require thought-provoking contemplation, if understood.
10. The New Testament. I think if more people actually read this a lot of the world's problems would be cleared up. A tremendous number of Christians spread a message of intolerance. Perhaps, if they read Jesus' teachings, they would realize that Jesus communed with lepers and prostitutes. Perhaps, if they read the Gospels, they'd understand that the apparent discrepancy between the New and Old testaments is one where the New, with its message of love and peace, supersedes the Old. If more Christians studied and read about Christ they may start to act more like him, rather than dividing and persecuting the human race and those who don't agree with them. On second thought, perhaps this should be first on the list...
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
"It's just weird to think that what we did tonight we won't be able to do later in our lives."
"Going out to eat?"
"Well, I mean the details."
"You're being kinda vague."
"We drove for half an hour to a restaurant that serves Indian cuisine in a car that uses gas. Eighty years from now, when we're on our deathbeds, we won't be able to do that."
"Why not?"
"Things will be different. I think distances will lengthen."
"What? You're being really vague."
"Over the next eighty years I think that distances, communication, all of that, rather than getting more compact will expand. We're not going to have the same convenience. I mean, think about the past eighty years and what all changed then."
"The, 1920's? 1930's? People still drove to Williamstown to eat dinner..."
"Yeah, but -"
"I mean, the details were different. The cars were different, and I don't think cars will run on gas, yeah, but why do you think it's going to expand and not contract?"
"Just a hunch. Just an assumption."
* * *
Think of the difference between 1929 and 2009. If I live to see 2069, that is, live roughly 80 years, how much change will I have witnessed? Already I've clocked five presidents, three wars, 9/11, and Oklahoma City.
I grew up learning how to use a dictionary for vocab drills, and saw computers evolve from Apple Plus to featherweight laptops of today. The internet and email arrived.
Cloning is no longer the science fiction of my youth. The debate on the death of dinosaurs has, more or less, been fixed to a meteor impact. AIDs has become a global epidemic which we may have to live with for the rest of our lives.
The civil rights debate has shifted/is shifting from racial minorities to homosexuals. 'Deep Throat' was exposed.
Hair metal and Michael Jackson were replaced by Nirvana and Alternative, were in turn replaced by Indie rock and Hipsters. Silicon valley and the housing market boomed and busted.
Car phones and wireless phones were replaced by cell phones. Tape decks were replaced by CDs which were replaced by iPods. The Organic, Buy Local, and Green movement took flight. Electric cars were invented.
The Berlin wall came down. Countries have been created and dissolved. Apartheid ended, and Hong Kong was relinquished. Fidel stepped down and Putin stepped up.
I'm just 22. That all has happened in about twenty years. I mean, for goodness sake, what may come in the next sixty? Looking back on the past eighty years, here are the highlights up to my birth:
Sputnik, Moon landing, a space station, and the Hubble telescope.
The Wall Street Crash, Great Depression, and ten presidents. The JFK assassination.
Rock and Roll, Hippies, Woodstock, Punk, Funk, Disco. Country rock, folk revival, bebop and modern jazz.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Van Der Rohe and Gropius.
Microwaves, refrigerators, and power tools. The interstate highway system. The end of operator girls. The rise of department stores, credit and credit cards, catalogues, and strip malls.
Plastic.
Computers, and the silicon chip which allowed them to be personalized.
Helicopters and jet engines. Nuclear reactors and weapons, radiocarbon dating. Insulin, LSD, DNA sequencing, genetically modified organisms and hybrid rice. Lasers.
"Adolescence", yuppies, the agricultural revolution, hot rods, diners, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Free Speech, Kurosawa, Felini, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Bergman and the Academy Awards.
Hemmingway, Faulkner, Borges, Brave New World, Orwell, Steinbeck, Lord of the Rings, Beat Generation, Asimov, Heinlein, Stephen King.
Feminism. Existentialism. Post-Modernism.
World War II and the Holocaust. 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man'. Stalinism's Great Purge, the Khmer Rouge, Chairman Mao and the Cold War. Korea and Vietnam.
Television. The rise and fall of the drive-in movie. LED technology. Aerosol, DDT, and supermarkets.
Ball point pens. Vending machines. Playboy.
Some people have seen all of this and more in their lives. The rate of change constantly increases.
So will people in 2069 still go out to dinner in Williamstown? Maybe. Will that interaction be at all identifiable with what we did tonight? I doubt it.
But that's just an assumption.
"Going out to eat?"
"Well, I mean the details."
"You're being kinda vague."
"We drove for half an hour to a restaurant that serves Indian cuisine in a car that uses gas. Eighty years from now, when we're on our deathbeds, we won't be able to do that."
"Why not?"
"Things will be different. I think distances will lengthen."
"What? You're being really vague."
"Over the next eighty years I think that distances, communication, all of that, rather than getting more compact will expand. We're not going to have the same convenience. I mean, think about the past eighty years and what all changed then."
"The, 1920's? 1930's? People still drove to Williamstown to eat dinner..."
"Yeah, but -"
"I mean, the details were different. The cars were different, and I don't think cars will run on gas, yeah, but why do you think it's going to expand and not contract?"
"Just a hunch. Just an assumption."
* * *
Think of the difference between 1929 and 2009. If I live to see 2069, that is, live roughly 80 years, how much change will I have witnessed? Already I've clocked five presidents, three wars, 9/11, and Oklahoma City.
I grew up learning how to use a dictionary for vocab drills, and saw computers evolve from Apple Plus to featherweight laptops of today. The internet and email arrived.
Cloning is no longer the science fiction of my youth. The debate on the death of dinosaurs has, more or less, been fixed to a meteor impact. AIDs has become a global epidemic which we may have to live with for the rest of our lives.
The civil rights debate has shifted/is shifting from racial minorities to homosexuals. 'Deep Throat' was exposed.
Hair metal and Michael Jackson were replaced by Nirvana and Alternative, were in turn replaced by Indie rock and Hipsters. Silicon valley and the housing market boomed and busted.
Car phones and wireless phones were replaced by cell phones. Tape decks were replaced by CDs which were replaced by iPods. The Organic, Buy Local, and Green movement took flight. Electric cars were invented.
The Berlin wall came down. Countries have been created and dissolved. Apartheid ended, and Hong Kong was relinquished. Fidel stepped down and Putin stepped up.
I'm just 22. That all has happened in about twenty years. I mean, for goodness sake, what may come in the next sixty? Looking back on the past eighty years, here are the highlights up to my birth:
Sputnik, Moon landing, a space station, and the Hubble telescope.
The Wall Street Crash, Great Depression, and ten presidents. The JFK assassination.
Rock and Roll, Hippies, Woodstock, Punk, Funk, Disco. Country rock, folk revival, bebop and modern jazz.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Van Der Rohe and Gropius.
Microwaves, refrigerators, and power tools. The interstate highway system. The end of operator girls. The rise of department stores, credit and credit cards, catalogues, and strip malls.
Plastic.
Computers, and the silicon chip which allowed them to be personalized.
Helicopters and jet engines. Nuclear reactors and weapons, radiocarbon dating. Insulin, LSD, DNA sequencing, genetically modified organisms and hybrid rice. Lasers.
"Adolescence", yuppies, the agricultural revolution, hot rods, diners, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Free Speech, Kurosawa, Felini, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Bergman and the Academy Awards.
Hemmingway, Faulkner, Borges, Brave New World, Orwell, Steinbeck, Lord of the Rings, Beat Generation, Asimov, Heinlein, Stephen King.
Feminism. Existentialism. Post-Modernism.
World War II and the Holocaust. 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man'. Stalinism's Great Purge, the Khmer Rouge, Chairman Mao and the Cold War. Korea and Vietnam.
Television. The rise and fall of the drive-in movie. LED technology. Aerosol, DDT, and supermarkets.
Ball point pens. Vending machines. Playboy.
Some people have seen all of this and more in their lives. The rate of change constantly increases.
So will people in 2069 still go out to dinner in Williamstown? Maybe. Will that interaction be at all identifiable with what we did tonight? I doubt it.
But that's just an assumption.
Monday, March 30, 2009
You can copy a newspaper with it...
Picture a toy chest, filled with a variety of toys. Ther're frisbees, blocks, sailboats, all sorts of fun toys.
Each toy is different, but each is fun, and is used differently. A frisbee and a sailboat can both provide amusement, but not if you sail a frisbee and toss a sailboat.
That is, each toy has a purpose.
Amongst this collection is an egg of silly putty. What is its purpose?
The way one enjoys silly putty is from the acceptance that its purpose is what you make of it. You test its extremities - how long, flat, and tall you can make it - while realizing that every silly putty tower must collapse upon itself.
That's my best description of philosophy. By engaging questions, impossible questions for which answers will never be found, you are testing your own extremities and ingenuities. Philosophy is mental silly putty.
Most kids mess around with silly putty, but don't properly engage it. Instead they sail sailboats, throw frisbees, and build with blocks. Some dress up in costumes and pretend. Others march stuffed bears.
Every kid has had the silly putty experience, though. And that is not true of the rest.
Each toy is different, but each is fun, and is used differently. A frisbee and a sailboat can both provide amusement, but not if you sail a frisbee and toss a sailboat.
That is, each toy has a purpose.
Amongst this collection is an egg of silly putty. What is its purpose?
The way one enjoys silly putty is from the acceptance that its purpose is what you make of it. You test its extremities - how long, flat, and tall you can make it - while realizing that every silly putty tower must collapse upon itself.
That's my best description of philosophy. By engaging questions, impossible questions for which answers will never be found, you are testing your own extremities and ingenuities. Philosophy is mental silly putty.
Most kids mess around with silly putty, but don't properly engage it. Instead they sail sailboats, throw frisbees, and build with blocks. Some dress up in costumes and pretend. Others march stuffed bears.
Every kid has had the silly putty experience, though. And that is not true of the rest.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Growing...up?
Basically, the American experience can be described by the phenomenon of feeding ducks.
When I was a child I liked to go to the ponds in Golden Gate Park and feed the ducks pieces of bread. When I grew up I learned that it is bad for the ducks to feed them.
Look those two sentences over again. Concerning the first sentence, did you ever ask yourself why? Why do families take their children to feed the duck? Our excursions were not unique - many young children can be seen throwing pieces of bread to ducks. But why?
Those two sentences tell you quite a lot about our society, or at least the society I grew up in. Many people never fed the ducks since, of course, their town had no ducks. I have counseling slots open for these people after work.
Yet the need for counseling merely underscores the 'why?'. Kids enjoy this. Why? I would look forward to it. I would take a bus across town for an hour to get to the park where my sister and I would dutifully bring bread for the ducks.
Did we think the ducks were dependant on us? They apparently got on fine without us the other days of the year. Did I have a particular vendetta against bread?
Maybe we just liked playing God, controlling these stupid, silly creatures. If the ducks were in one area you'd throw the bread into another and watch the quackers rush over.
There was always a hero and a villain. The hero never got any crumbs, he was a tragic hero, and the villain was the gluttonous successful one.
Already at this young age my liberal sensibilities were forming.
Recall the initial sentences: "When I was a child I liked to go to the ponds in Golden Gate Park and feed the ducks pieces of bread. When I grew up I learned that it is bad for the ducks to feed them." We've addressed, if not solved, the 'like' factor. A savvy reader would have picked up on my upbringing from other clues, as well. The fact that I have to go to a park relates my urban setting, as did the bus reference. There's a goldmine of inferences about being raised in an urban setting and the retreat, the urge, to escape to a patch of wilderness in the big city.
The fact that I wasted bread on lower orders is also a powerful testament to the affluence which I was granted. Such behavior would be inconceivable, even criminal, elsewhere.
Let's look at the second half now. Bread, it seems, is not healthy for ducks. They eat it, I suppose because it tastes good, or is easier to catch when thrown at their heads than hunting for insects and fish. (Do ducks eat insects? Do they eat fish?) At a certain age I went from enjoying feeding the ducks, which were also apparently a nuisance in the park, to silently shunning and thinking scornful thoughts about those harmful imbeciles who fattened and promoted an unhealthy pestilent duck population.
Greatest testimony of all, is how often this happens to us. Not ducks necessarily, although ducks work for me, you may have your own, but something that was innocent fun or enjoyable as a child which you learn is actually bad.
This is not a tremendously new discovery. Many people for a long time have said that growing up is a loss of innocence. But it's not. Growing up is a loss of innocence in America. The more I consider it the more I realize how this affects our national character, if we still claim to have such a thing.
Of course the 'loss of innocence' is true for many parts of the growing up experience. But increasingly pain, suffering, and sexual activity are all familiar to people before their adolescence, the traditional age for loss of innocence. (Which, in and of itself is a distinctly American myth, propagated by one Anna Freud. But the sturm und drang of the American adolescent is not here or there. Except in the sense that it is everywhere: another successful American global export.) These losses are especially common for those who live in the second and third world (remember them?). Feeding ducks is wasteful, consumerist, childish, irresponsible, and a number of other synonyms that people equate from the past eight years with 'American'. It is an extravagance that only the middle class and upper class can afford.
Moving on from this self-flagellation, I am more concerned with the second element, that of discovery. More specifically I think we can take these ducks and apply them to school. When we are children in first grade we put on Pilgrim plays and meet the nice Indians. Note: the indians are a monolithic peoples, the Pilgrims are British, and the two get along. Ten years later you have to relearn the whole scenario, and from a different point of view, namely that of slaughter and extortion and tension of colonialism and settler's wants conflicting with a variety of people's needs.
Each semester I cover Columbus with my students they are surprised to learn the realities of a cruel, morally reprehensible individual who is going to Hell if there ever was one.
Couldn't Columbus be a bad guy from the start? Why don't the first graders learn about the sorrows of imperialism? I mean, they can handle sorrow, loss and develop their ethics at this time. You need not provide graphically scarring details, but it would make my life easier.
So much what we learn as a child is overturned when we get older. Maybe this way we could ease some of the hormonal storms and stress of adolescence, as well as that horrific distrust of preteens, who are slowly realizing that everything they've been told is lies.
Just a thought in consideration for unhealthy ducks.
When I was a child I liked to go to the ponds in Golden Gate Park and feed the ducks pieces of bread. When I grew up I learned that it is bad for the ducks to feed them.
Look those two sentences over again. Concerning the first sentence, did you ever ask yourself why? Why do families take their children to feed the duck? Our excursions were not unique - many young children can be seen throwing pieces of bread to ducks. But why?
Those two sentences tell you quite a lot about our society, or at least the society I grew up in. Many people never fed the ducks since, of course, their town had no ducks. I have counseling slots open for these people after work.
Yet the need for counseling merely underscores the 'why?'. Kids enjoy this. Why? I would look forward to it. I would take a bus across town for an hour to get to the park where my sister and I would dutifully bring bread for the ducks.
Did we think the ducks were dependant on us? They apparently got on fine without us the other days of the year. Did I have a particular vendetta against bread?
Maybe we just liked playing God, controlling these stupid, silly creatures. If the ducks were in one area you'd throw the bread into another and watch the quackers rush over.
There was always a hero and a villain. The hero never got any crumbs, he was a tragic hero, and the villain was the gluttonous successful one.
Already at this young age my liberal sensibilities were forming.
Recall the initial sentences: "When I was a child I liked to go to the ponds in Golden Gate Park and feed the ducks pieces of bread. When I grew up I learned that it is bad for the ducks to feed them." We've addressed, if not solved, the 'like' factor. A savvy reader would have picked up on my upbringing from other clues, as well. The fact that I have to go to a park relates my urban setting, as did the bus reference. There's a goldmine of inferences about being raised in an urban setting and the retreat, the urge, to escape to a patch of wilderness in the big city.
The fact that I wasted bread on lower orders is also a powerful testament to the affluence which I was granted. Such behavior would be inconceivable, even criminal, elsewhere.
Let's look at the second half now. Bread, it seems, is not healthy for ducks. They eat it, I suppose because it tastes good, or is easier to catch when thrown at their heads than hunting for insects and fish. (Do ducks eat insects? Do they eat fish?) At a certain age I went from enjoying feeding the ducks, which were also apparently a nuisance in the park, to silently shunning and thinking scornful thoughts about those harmful imbeciles who fattened and promoted an unhealthy pestilent duck population.
Greatest testimony of all, is how often this happens to us. Not ducks necessarily, although ducks work for me, you may have your own, but something that was innocent fun or enjoyable as a child which you learn is actually bad.
This is not a tremendously new discovery. Many people for a long time have said that growing up is a loss of innocence. But it's not. Growing up is a loss of innocence in America. The more I consider it the more I realize how this affects our national character, if we still claim to have such a thing.
Of course the 'loss of innocence' is true for many parts of the growing up experience. But increasingly pain, suffering, and sexual activity are all familiar to people before their adolescence, the traditional age for loss of innocence. (Which, in and of itself is a distinctly American myth, propagated by one Anna Freud. But the sturm und drang of the American adolescent is not here or there. Except in the sense that it is everywhere: another successful American global export.) These losses are especially common for those who live in the second and third world (remember them?). Feeding ducks is wasteful, consumerist, childish, irresponsible, and a number of other synonyms that people equate from the past eight years with 'American'. It is an extravagance that only the middle class and upper class can afford.
Moving on from this self-flagellation, I am more concerned with the second element, that of discovery. More specifically I think we can take these ducks and apply them to school. When we are children in first grade we put on Pilgrim plays and meet the nice Indians. Note: the indians are a monolithic peoples, the Pilgrims are British, and the two get along. Ten years later you have to relearn the whole scenario, and from a different point of view, namely that of slaughter and extortion and tension of colonialism and settler's wants conflicting with a variety of people's needs.
Each semester I cover Columbus with my students they are surprised to learn the realities of a cruel, morally reprehensible individual who is going to Hell if there ever was one.
Couldn't Columbus be a bad guy from the start? Why don't the first graders learn about the sorrows of imperialism? I mean, they can handle sorrow, loss and develop their ethics at this time. You need not provide graphically scarring details, but it would make my life easier.
So much what we learn as a child is overturned when we get older. Maybe this way we could ease some of the hormonal storms and stress of adolescence, as well as that horrific distrust of preteens, who are slowly realizing that everything they've been told is lies.
Just a thought in consideration for unhealthy ducks.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Oog
Here are some unfortunate considerations:
Scientists who study spider intelligence increasingly are discovering that certain arachnids show signs of intelligence.
Take, for example, jumping spiders. Jumping spiders, of course, need to have a little more mental processing than your average layabout web weaver. A jumping spider has to catch its prey actively, which requires 3D spatial imaging, as well as the ability to judge distances and determine outcomes.
Studies have shown that these little buggers also have a decent memmory and can be goal-oriented. They also, like bees, have a means of communicating with one another. Ever seen a spider flip its little front legs around in seemingly random swirls? It's trying to talk to you.
Does this make me want to squish them more or less? I can tolerate spiders at a safe distance. That distance increases with the increase of size. I'm fine being mano a mano with a goliath bird eating tarantula. But it better be at least five feet away. Six would be better.
If it's behind glass then there's no problem. I can walk right up to it. Because it can't get on me.
There's something to contemplate next time you have to take the life of a fly and mosquito catcher.
Scientists who study spider intelligence increasingly are discovering that certain arachnids show signs of intelligence.
Take, for example, jumping spiders. Jumping spiders, of course, need to have a little more mental processing than your average layabout web weaver. A jumping spider has to catch its prey actively, which requires 3D spatial imaging, as well as the ability to judge distances and determine outcomes.
Studies have shown that these little buggers also have a decent memmory and can be goal-oriented. They also, like bees, have a means of communicating with one another. Ever seen a spider flip its little front legs around in seemingly random swirls? It's trying to talk to you.
Does this make me want to squish them more or less? I can tolerate spiders at a safe distance. That distance increases with the increase of size. I'm fine being mano a mano with a goliath bird eating tarantula. But it better be at least five feet away. Six would be better.
If it's behind glass then there's no problem. I can walk right up to it. Because it can't get on me.
There's something to contemplate next time you have to take the life of a fly and mosquito catcher.
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