Third Time's a Charm!

I slept in this morning, setting my alarm for 7:55 AM because a contractor was coming to our house to finish putting in a floor in the upstairs bathroom. Just a few seconds after the alarm went off I heard this rumbling noise along with a vibration which made me assume the rumbling noise was coming from somewhere in the house.

"What was THAT?" my wife asked me.

"I don't know," I said. I thought maybe something was wrong with the furnace, and that it had made that noise as it came on, but I listened and the furnace wasn't running. The sound also vaguely reminded me of what happens when the water is shut off and turned back on after air has gotten into the pipes. There was definitely some rattling of pipes in the sound. But I listened, and it didn't sound like anyone was up to have turned on the water. So I sort of forgot about it. Until just a few minutes later when my wife told me that the cause of the vibration was on the news...

I've "experienced" three earthquakes now, and I completely missed the first two. The first time was when I was in college and at home in Frankfort. I was busy watching the Charlton Heston film Planet of the Apes. I was completely engrossed in the story when everyone else in the house came running into the living room shouting, "Did you FEEL that? Did you FEEL that? That HAD to be an earthquake!"

"I didn't feel anything," I said. "I was watching a movie."

"WHAT?" was the reply I received. "How could you NOT have heard and felt that?"

I told them what I'll tell you now: Planet of the Apes is a really good movie. I was focused!

My second earthquake experience was just a few years ago. The family was living at Vent Haven, and it was early in the morning. I was downstairs in the basement working out on the elliptical and watching TV with cordless headphones on so I wouldn't wake up the rest of the family. My older daughter came running downstairs, and it was pretty much a repeat of the first conversation.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" she shouted. "Did you feel that earthquake?"

I whipped off the headphones. "Did I WHAT?"

"Did you feel the earthquake? I was in bed and felt it, and so did Mom. It's all over the news."

"No," I said, "I was moving around on the elliptical and didn't feel anything. Plus, I was watching TV."

So apparently I can't watch TV and feel earthquakes at the same time.

But today, I can excitedly report that I DID feel it. Actually, I guess I heard it more than felt it. But I experienced it!

Third time's a charm...

"The smell of hospitals in winter..."

It's been a difficult month for me, with a lot of family tragedy and plenty of other stresses, and just not a very pleasant cycle of the moon. It's been so difficult, in fact, that I found myself a couple of days ago, when someone said that there were only a couple of days left in the year, saying "Yeah, and the end of this year can't come soon enough. It's been a terrible year."

But that's a tremendous disservice to the year 2010. I shouldn't judge the year based solely on the feelings of the last month. It's been a good year personally, all things considered. Here are some of the highlights.

January 

My younger daughter turned 11 years old. More than that, she and her friends got to put to use one of her birthday presents, a cupcake decorating book called Hello Cupcake. Instead of having a pre-made birthday cake, she and her party guests built their own snowmen cupcakes. It was a LOT of fun, and I'm not a crafty person.

February

• We got a lot of snow in Cincinnati, which caused me a lot of headaches at work in regards to the school calendar (Thank GOD I'm not in charge of that anymore), but truth be told I LOVE the snow.
• I got a Roku player for my birthday, which allowed me to stream Netflix movies directly to our HDTV. I honestly think it might be--after the personal computer--my favorite piece of technology EVER!
• My sister and her generous husband came and put doors on our built in bookshelves, converting them into cabinets, which made our basement family room look MUCH neater. Thanks, Jackie and Ann. 

March

• My younger daughter's Odyssey of the Mind team won the regional competition for her problem and grade level, and her team was given the Ranatra Fusca Award, which is given to the most overall creative solution at ALL grade levels, elementary through college level. 
• My older daughter won two writing awards at the Northern Kentucky Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. 
• My older daughter also performed in the Northern Kentucky Select Band concert. Entrance into the select band requires an audition, and many musicians do not make the cut. 
• The Kentucky Society for Technology in Education, of which I was at the time vice-president, moved its annual technology conference from the summer to early March, and we put on a successful conference. Attendance swelled from slightly more than 500 at the summer conferences to more than 1,500 participants in March (By the way, as president this year, I hope to continue the tradition of a successful spring conference!). 
• And to bookend the month, my younger daughter's Odyssey of the Mind team won the STATE competition as well (for the second year in a row, no less!), sending them to the World Finals in May. 

April

• For Spring Break, the family went to visit Lisa's dad and his wife in The Villages, Florida, and had--as usual--a very nice time. We even got to see the Space Shuttle take off! We look forward to going back this year and visiting her cancer-free father there once again. 
• The old Fort Mitchell Kroger was torn down so that a NEW Kroger could open. By the way, I thought I was a little batty writing the blog post I made above, until I realized that another Fort Mitchell citizen made a YouTube video about the store closing, so apparently I wasn't alone in my sentimentality. 

May

• My younger daughter, who for years has said she wants to be on the track team in middle school and high school, ran in her first 5K run. 
• My older daughter cleaned house on Honor's Day. Though I didn't make a post about it, my younger daughter did pretty well, too!
• Lisa and my younger daughter traveled to Michigan for the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals.

June--Not a lot to say about this month. We mostly went to the pool and took it easy before marching season began. We really had no idea what marching band season was going to be like, but we'd been warned by veteran parents to take advantage of this month, and we did as they said. 

July

• The garden that we planted in May began paying dividends. HUGE dividends.
• Meredith began marching band season, attending rookie camp and her first ever band camp.
• Lisa and I helped again at the Vent Haven ConVENTion. This was our ELEVENTH ventriloquist convention. If you'd asked me twelve years ago how many ventriloquist conventions I would attend by the year 2010, I don't think my answer would be anywhere NEAR eleven. 

August, September, and October: I can sum these three months up in two words: marching band. Seriously. It feels like that's all we did. But there WERE a few other things. Most notably, in August and September we had the retaining wall in front of the house replaced, and in October I painted the entire foundation. And the three months ended with my older daughter and her band mates winning the state championship! Which is a good thing. 

November: November began promisingly enough. It was going to be a month of rest after the chaos that was marching band season. And it WAS nice for most of the month. But the month ended with the death of my father and the news of other family issues. Which brings me to...

December. As I said at the start of this blog entry, December has been tough. The month began with my father's layout on December 1 and his burial the next day. Wrap into it medical issues with close family members on both sides of the family, as well as other stresses, and it has definitely been my least favorite month this year. Probably this decade. Well, September of 2001 was pretty bad, too, but no one I knew personally died then, so I'm not sure it would necessarily be worse. Let's put December, 2010 and September, 2001 as worst months one and two of the decade.

This song pretty much sums up how I feel about the month. The song also, though, hold out hope that next year will be better than the last month. I sure hope it is.

(I can't see the video.)

P.S. Wow. Just re-read this and realized that it sounds JUST LIKE one of those annoying end of the year letters that people used to send us. You know, back before blogs like this existed. Holy crap. I've become the very thing I hated. At least I didn't mail this to you and EXPECT you to read it!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I really don't have a post for today, just wanted to say that. As long as I'm here, though, embedded below is the entire film It's a Wonderful Life. It's a film that was made long before the age of perpetual copyright, so it's in the public domain now. It's been part of the Christmas tradition in my house to watch the film at least once every year. It's also been a tradition to cry at the end of it.

Merry Christmas.



(I can't see the movie.)

The Great Stories

On a couple of different occasions in this blog I've written about something that was "new" to me but probably old hat to a lot of other people. Here's another of those.

I've never been a huge fan of the fantasy genre, so I've never read J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy Lord of the Rings. I DID read The Hobbit when I was in high school, but it wasn't my kind of read, so I didn't even try to read the larger, more famous work. Similarly, when Peter Jackson made the films of the three novels a decade ago, I watched the first film, again decided that they weren't for me, and never bothered with the final two films.

Until last night.

My older daughter IS a fan of fantasy fiction, and I told her a couple of weeks ago that--if she were going to call herself a fan of fantasy fiction--she really needed to be exposed to Tolkien, since everything else is sort of derivative of his work. So last week we watched the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, and last night and the night before we watched The Two Towers. The second film did nothing, really, to endear me to the genre. But I was absolutely blown away by a speech given at the end of the film.

In the film, Frodo, the main character, is discouraged. Heck, "discouraged" isn't even the right word; it doesn't go deep enough. He's despairing. He think he can't go on and complete his quest. And his friend and sidekick Sam stands and delivers a rousing speech. It was so good that as soon as it was over I stopped, told my kids we had to watch it again, and we did. When the film ended ten minutes later, I rewound back to that spot and watched it two more times (and made my kids watch it, too, to the point that I think they were actually relieved when I let them leave the room).

If I ever teach English again (Hey! You never know) I may begin the year by playing this scene, as I think it explains the purpose of literature.

Of course, you may not be as moved by this scene as I am. First, if you haven't watched the film, the visuals will make no sense to you. Second, I buried my father three weeks ago today, and I know I'm still pretty emotionally raw. I think I see my own discouragement in Frodo's despair.

I think it DOES help to know that this part of the novel was written during the height of World War II, when Hitler (Sauron in the novel) looked like an unstoppable force, and the real world full of evil. Tolkien was writing a message of hope in an age of darkness.

Anyway, here's the clip, eight years after millions of other people have seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEMdXhfO-Wk

Christmas Spirit (or lack thereof)

It's less than a week until Christmas, and I haven't made ANY blog posts about Christmas this year. This is my third year keeping this blog, and in 2008 and 2009 I made LOTS of December posts about Christmas (as evidenced here and here). This year, though I've tried, I haven't been able to find anything to say.

Maybe it's just that--in the plethora of posts I've made before--I've said about all I have to say about Christmas. I've written about favorite presents, favorite Christmas songs, LEAST favorite Christmas songs, and favorite Christmas movies and TV specials. I've shown the video of my daughter reading HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, and video of Linus explaining Christmas to Charlie Brown. I've shared Christmas memories.

I guess there isn't a lot left to say.

But I don't think that's it. It goes deeper than just not having something to say. Three nights ago the family drove all around Fort Mitchell looking at Christmas lights. It's a yearly tradition. And when it was over, I told the family, "I don't know. I just wasn't very excited about anything we saw."

The easy answer, I guess, is that I'm still mourning my father's death right after Thanksgiving. And that certainly could be part of the problem. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed at work. That could be it, too. Or maybe it's that my kids are growing up and aren't themselves as excited as they used to be. There certainly are fewer actual toys under the tree this year, so that could play a part in it as well. Whatever the reason, though, I'm just not feeling it.

Tomorrow night Lisa and I will wrap the Christmas presents we do have, and I'm hoping that will get me in the spirit. It usually does.

In the meantime, below once again is the 8 year old video of my daughter reading HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. I'm going to publish this post and then watch the video. I'm sure it will help. I think I'd need a heart of stone to not be put in the Christmas spirit by this video.


(I can't see the video.)

On Snow and TV News

My last blog post was about Monday's snow day for my school district, and how I spent the day at work getting  a backlog of responsibilities taken care of. I also mentioned how, in 21 years in my district, we'd only missed a day of school before Christmas twice before. This Thursday, though, we had our second snow day before Christmas, and that has NEVER happened before in the entire history of my school district (I know because prior to this year I was in charge of the school calendar for the district--making sure that whatever calendar the board passed met state requirements--and I have a binder still in my office with every calendar going back to the start of the district more than 100 years ago).

But I don't want to talk about that today. I want to talk about something I realized Thursday morning.

As I said at the start of this post, Monday I went into work despite the weather and got a lot of work done. Thursday, though, the snow was still coming down hard at rush hour, and I decided that I would just stay home and spend the day with my family, since my kids were off school, too. We had a nice morning. After sleeping in, I made pancakes as we listened to Christmas music, and then we went into the living room with the fireplace roaring and the Christmas tree lights on and watched a Christmas DVD before going outside to play in the snow.

Later, I told my family at lunch, "This has been a FANTASTIC morning, and do you know why?" After they humored me and asked why, I said, "Because we didn't watch the TV news all morning!"

"What's wrong with the TV news?" my daughter asked me.

And I told them. Here's what's wrong with the TV news:* In Cincinnati anyway, whenever there's a big snow storm, every station does exactly the same thing. At the top of the hour, the news anchor gets on and talks about the terrible snow storm and how terrible things are at there, and how if you're wanting to know if your school or activity is closed that you can watch the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Then they'll cut to the weather man standing over at the green screen, and he'll start making predictions about the weather and how much snow there will be. Lately, the weather people have started getting really specific, with an "Hour by Hour forecast," which during a snow storm sounds something like this: "As you look at the Hour by Hour forecast here, you'll see that at 8 AM there'll be snow. That snow will still be coming down at 9 AM, and it will STILL be coming down at 10 AM. By 11 the snow will start to diminish a little, and by noon it will just be flurries."

This is an incredible waste of everyone's time. The forecaster could simply have said, "It's going to snow from now until noon."

But that's not the part that bothers me, though. What bothers me is what comes next. After the forecaster finishes the station will go back to the news anchor, who will take us out to a remote location somewhere in the Tri-state area. Maybe Oak Hills. And there'll be some poor reporter in a parka standing in a parking lot beside a street. He'll say something like, "Well, as you can see, the snow is really coming down out here! The roads are slippery, and it's cold." The camera man will then pan down to the reporter's feet, and the reporter will use the tip of his shoe to move the snow around. "It looks like there's a good 3 or 4 inches of snow out here and there's more coming down, so things are really treacherous out here. If you look over my shoulder..." He'll pause so that the camera man can pan over his shoulder. "...you'll see that traffic is moving really slowly." True to his word, there will be a line of cars moving at 15 or 20 miles per hour. "People are taking it slow, and as long as you do so, I think you'll be able to get around, but it's definitely a tricky drive this morning."

THAT's not the part that bothers me about the news report. Never mind that I could look out my window and get this "breaking news" myself. Maybe some people watching are at work in a basement without any windows. I don't have any problem with the TV news going to a remote reporter to tell us what it's like out there.

What bothers me is that the TV news will then go back to the anchor who will say, "Thanks, Ken. Stay warm out there." And after a sly little chuckle, as if the anchor considers himself the funniest guy in the world, he'll say, "And now we go to Susan on the EAST side of town to see how things are going over there." And so they cut to Susan, who's on a hill somewhere in Over the Rhine. And she'll say pretty much EXACTLY the same thing that Ken in Oak Hills said. Then they'll cut to someone in Northern Kentucky, usually someone on the overpass in Fort Wright or Fort Mitchell (When I used to live beside that overpass in Fort Mitchell I could look out on snowy days and see the news vans all lined up along the side of the road). And guess what? Same story in Northern Kentucky.

News stations, the Cincinnati metro area is NOT that big. The weather in Northern Cincinnati is pretty much the same as the weather in Northern Kentucky as in the West Side as in the East Side. There's no reason to keep showing us the same stuff over and over. The ONLY time that the news stations should be doing this is if there's some gigantic discrepancy.

ANCHOR: Ken, how are the roads in Fort Mitchell?

KEN: They're terrible. People are sliding everywhere. It's ice, ice, and more ice. Everything's nasty.

ANCHOR: Wow. Be careful out there. Let's check with Glen in Miamitown. Glen, any ice out there?

GLEN: Nope. It's a little cloudy, but that's about it. People are out walking their dogs. It's not bad at all.

ANCHOR: Uh, okay. Susan's in Mount Lookout. Susan, how are things there?

SUSAN: We have over a foot of snow, Don. People are having to dig their way out of their homes.

ANCHOR: Wow, Susan. That's scary stuff. And now let's check in with Michael in King's Mill. Michael, how are things up there?

MICHAEL: Great, Don. We're here at the Beach Waterpark where it's 85 degrees and the Beach is having a special "Waterslide with Santa" special where you can come to the park today, swim on the slides, and even play in the wave pool with Santa Claus. Come on out. Half of all admissions benefit the Salvation Army."

Now THAT would be NEWS!

*Wow. That's the longest introduction to something that I've ever written. Everything after this asterisk is what I set out to write about today. I just had a helluva time getting to this point.

Snow Day!

Today school was cancelled in my school district due to the weather.

This is my 21st year working in my school district, and I can think of only two other years in which we had a school cancellation prior to Christmas. Once was a snowstorm like this year, and the other year wasn't actually snow at all--two years ago the remnants of a hurricane blew through Kentucky, knocking out power all over the state. My district missed a day of school because of this. So a snow day in December is very rare for us.

And it couldn't have come at a better time.

December is--from a paper work perspective--absolutely the busiest month of the year for me, and I missed a week of work right at the beginning of the month, which put me WAY behind. I joked with administrators last week that I had five things that I absolutely HAD to get done before Thanksgiving, and that I was down to only three of them left to do. After a day of work today with many fewer interruptions than usual, I can say that I now only have ONE thing left to do that I absolutely HAVE to get done before Thanksgiving! So that's progress...

Also, the snow is nice because it's actually starting to look like Christmas outside!

Second Chances

This is probably the last post I'll make about my father for a while. I'm cried out and talked out and honestly ready to move on to something else for a while. But I wanted to share one last thing...

My father almost died in the fall of 1983, when I was a sophomore in high school. He went into the hospital for a rather simple procedure--he was having a a stent put into an artery in one of his legs. It should have improved the circulation of the leg and taken away the agonizing pains he was having. But that didn't happen. Instead, soon after the surgery, he developed a staph infection at the point of surgery. It wasn't diagnosed quickly enough, and he very nearly died. He was rushed to a hospital in Louisville, and the doctors told him that--if he'd been sent there a DAY earlier--they could have healed him without any major issues, and--if he'd been sent there an HOUR later--he wouldn't have survived. As it was, he DID survive, but the doctors had to amputate much of the leg.

I was devastated. My father was my hero. The idea that he was anything less than superman, the idea that he might not always be there for me, had never really crossed my mind.

More than that, prior to that time, when I thought of my dad, I primarily thought of him playing with us kids outside, playing basketball in the back yard, running along the beaches and jumping waves with us in the ocean when we were on vacations. He was an active man. It seemed especially cruel that this needless, senseless accident had taken his leg. It hit me hard.

Harder than just about everyone but my mom, it seemed. I was in denial about the whole thing for a while. I was the absolute last of the siblings to visit my father in the hospital. It wasn't that I was too busy. I passed up lots of opportunities to go and visit. It was as if the problem didn't exist if I didn't see him. When I finally did go and see him in the hospital I poked my head in for a minute, said hello, and went back out of the room quickly. I didn't want to face the truth.

For years I just put the issue out of my mind. I didn't deal with it in any real sense, and it would bubble up in emotional outbursts that I didn't understand. During my senior year of high school, during halftime of the last home football game, my school honored the seniors who had participated in fall sports and activities. After a few words from our coach, the rest of the senior football players and I left the locker room and went to the sideline where all of the other seniors were waiting with their parents. The seniors and their parents walked one by one to the center of the field and were introduced over the loudspeaker. When it was our turn, my mother and father and I walked, like the others before us, up the 50 yard line. My father had a cane, and he walked with a limp which was slight but noticeable, and as we walked toward the center of the field I became aware that we were walking much slower than the families before us had. It was as fast as my father could go, though. And in that moment, I was so angry at my father for walking so slowly. I was shaking and almost in a rage by the time we got to the center of the field. There was so much anger directed toward my father--or, to be more accurate--MISdirected toward my father.

Four years after my father lost his leg, in 1987, Bruce Springsteen released the record Tunnel of Love, and on the record was a single entitled "Walk Like a Man." I didn't much care for the record the first time I listened to it (though it grew on me and I regard it as one of his better records now), but "Walk Like a Man" was a punch in the gut. The first time I heard the song I lay on the bed in my room with my headphones on and cried--I felt like Springsteen was singing a song about MY experience (Apparently I'm not alone in feeling that way about Springsteen, which is why Springsteen is a multi-million selling artist).

The speaker of the song is a son speaking to his father, and two lines at the end of the song were what struck me so soundly. Those two lines are "I was young and I didn't know what to do / When I saw your best steps stolen away from you." That was EXACTLY how I felt. My father's leg and the steps that leg would take had been STOLEN from him, and he'd never be able to do again so many of the active things he'd loved to do before. My heart broke for him, and for years and years I'd tear up EVERY TIME that line of the song was sung, even if I'd just heard the song four or five times before.

For such a long time I was resentful and angry about what had happened to my father. But eventually, I didn't feel that way anymore. Though I still wish it'd never happened, in some ways, it was a blessing. In real life and in movies, I've seen people die and others close to them bemoan their deaths and say, "I always thought there'd be more time...If only I'd known he was going to die...If only I had a second chance to tell him how I felt!" I had TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS of second chances to tell my father how I felt about him, and once I finally pulled my head out of my butt and dealt with and understood how I felt about my father's near death, I was able to do so.

I'm not sure when it happened, but one day in 1994 I realized that I no longer had the anger anymore about my dad and his situation. Instead of being angry that my dad had lost his leg, I was SO GRATEFUL that he'd survived, and I resolved to let him know whenever I could how I felt about him. And I did. That year I wrote a poem, typed it in a fancy font, framed it and gave it to him for Christmas. It's still hanging on the wall at my parent's house. I read it earlier this week and...sheesh...well, at least I meant well (Mom, if you're reading this and you've been keeping it up just to keep from hurting my feelings, know that it's okay to take it down whenever you want). But the quality of the poem's not the point. I was trying to reach out to him, trying to let him know that I loved him and respected him and that in no small part he was a part of me and a part of who I am.

More than that, I also began treating EVERY time I said goodbye to him as if it might be the last time that I said goodbye to him. I would tell him I loved him and hug him and make sure there were no hard feelings of any kind between us. I'd almost lost him without getting to say goodbye the way I wanted to. I meant to never have that happen again.

And the poem wasn't the only "product" that I ever made for him. I made several others. The one I'm proudest of is the video that's below. It's a series of photos of my father's life and photos of my life that mirror his. I'm trying to make the point that he shaped me into who I am, and that I'm following in his footsteps. I put music to the video, and of course I chose "Walk Like a Man" to be the music. It's not just background music, either--it's integral to the video.
It's a personal message between me and my father, and maybe it's not appropriate to share it with the general public. I do so here for a couple of reasons. First, I just want to. I'm still mourning, and this helps me. Get off my back.

Second, I want to encourage anyone still reading this to remember that the people we love will not always be with us. I'm at peace with my father because I know that four years ago I gave him this video, and that I tried as often as possible in smaller ways to let him know what he meant to me, too. I'm not saying you should go out and make a video--it would become cliche if we all did so. But don't hold back from telling the people around you how much they mean to you.

You never know when the second chances stop.



(I can't see the video)

Why

It's too soon to really write about my dad's passing. It's too raw, and honestly, I'm not sure anyone other than my immediate family would care much anyway.

Something I've noticed, though, is how much--when I couldn't take the mourning--my brain would fixate on something that had nothing to do with what was happening. Random thoughts, I guess, that kept me from overloading, which is what I typically felt was going to happen just before the thoughts would pop into my head.  Here are some of the random thoughts I've had since my father died:

• Why did they go to the trouble to put these fake imperfections in these fake marble tiles? The imperfections are so regular that the effect is ruined anyway.
• My sister is right. Why IS that Craftsmen tool chest--identical to my father's--in the ICU room?
• Why do people keep bringing food to the house? I guess to give us something to do, trying to figure out where to store all of the food.
• Why is it so cold in this house?
• Why haven't the neighbor's put their Halloween decorations away yet?
• Why, when I only have one change of clothes here, is it inevitable that I would spill vegetable soup down the front of me?
• Why did I think I would find any good clothes at Wal-Mart?
• Why would I get a bad cold just before all of this happened?

Questions of  "why" that kept me from focusing on the REAL "why" question that I knew there'd be no good answer to.

In Memory

My father died this morning. It was sudden and unexpected. I'll write more about that later, I suppose.

For now, though, I want to share these. A few years ago I was contemplating making a documentary of my family's history, and I created these two brief videos as a sort of proof of concept. They're short, but they say a lot about the kind of man my father was.

I'm still reeling. I'll write more later.


(I can't see video 1).



(I can't see video 2).

Unashamedly Moderate

A couple of days ago I was in the hospital visiting a relative. I was there along with the patient and two other visitors. A lab technician came in, and he seemed like a chipper enough fellow at first. "Good morning!" he said in a loud voice. "How's everyone feeling today?"

"Fine," one of the other visitors said. "How are you?"

"Fantastic!" the technician said in that fake, cheery voice that so many hospital staff members use. He continued in that same voice: "At least, I'm doing a lot better than the 20 percent of Americans who are out of a job this Thanksgiving!"

It was a weird comment, and if it had been the ONLY weird comment he'd made, I'd have probably not given it a second thought. And at first, I thought it WAS going to be the only weird thing he said, because he followed that up with, "I'm going to have to get around you here and check his blood pressure and other readings."  It was a small room, and he slid around me and the other visitors to get over to where the machines are. He began fumbling with the equipment in the corner, and then he continued, "Yeah, the government wants you to think that unemployment is 10%, but they're just rigging the numbers to make it look that way, you know what I mean?"

I didn't know what he meant, so I answered him honestly. "No, I don't know."

His eyes got wide. "Oh yeah! The government's wanting to count all of the 16 and 17 year old who just got a summer job and are working. They want to hide the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of benefited workers who are losing their jobs every month." He got the blood pressure cuff on the patient and started taking the readings. "That's just the kind of deceit you can expect from a government, though, whose President isn't even an American citizen. Know what I mean?" He laughed a little, as if this was the most absurd and obvious fact.

"How's he doing?" I said, pointing to the patient, trying to change the subject.

"What?" the technician said. After a moment of blankly starting at me, he realized what I was referring to and said, "Oh him? He's fine. Which is better than I can say for all of these people who have to try to go through whole body scanners at the airports or else get sexually abused by some TSA agent!" He laughed again at his own joke. "Can you believe that stuff? These liberals want to take away all of our freedoms! They want to make this a socialist nation, like the USSR!"

"It's a little crowded in here," I said to the man. "I'm going to step outside and let you finish your job." It probably wasn't the bravest thing to do, to leave the other three in the room at the mercy of this guy. But I couldn't take him anymore. Eventually, one of the other visitors got tired of the man and joined me in the hallway as well, and finally the guy left. I went back inside, and everyone in the room was laughing and rolling their eyes. "I thought that guy was joking at first," I said, and everyone nodded in agreement, "but then he kept going and going."

"He was fired up," someone said.

I don't know when everyone got so angry about politics that it now bleeds over into the chit chat of hospital personnel. As someone mentioned a few minutes after the guy left, what if the patient had been a die hard liberal? It seemed like completely inappropriate behavior, but I think it's just a sign of the times. Americans have become so combative, and it seems there's no one left who is willing to compromise and work with people of different ideology. We've voted all of those people out of office, and we're left with only the hard liners who view the other side as the uninformed enemy. I guess I blame Fox News and MSNBC and Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken and anyone else who just wants to shout over top of others without listening.

I said above that no one wants to compromise anymore. I'll go a step further than that, and say that for many people, words like "compromise" and "working together" and "forging middle ground" are now dirty words, signs of weakness and lack of conviction. And it's a shame, because it's the people who ARE willing to do those things who actually get things done.

A couple of months ago on Facebook I changed my profile so that my political views are listed as "Unashamedly moderate." I added the first word because I refuse to be made to feel like a wishy washy person just because I see some sense to what the Democrats say and some sense to what the Republicans say. No one out there--and no party, either--has a monopoly on common sense. And the sooner we can all realize that, and all start working together again, the sooner we can start working on the very real problems that face this nation, and the sooner we can all stop being so hateful to people who think differently from us.

Blind as a Bat, Part Two

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog entry, I used to be terribly nearsighted (So much so, in fact, that if you aren't severely nearsighted yourself, you might want to read yesterday's blog entry to get a feel for what it's like to be practically blind), and that fact led me to an interesting discovery about non-verbal communication.

It happened in December of 1996. At the time I normally wore contacts, but I had a pair of glasses that were three or four prescriptions old and that I would occasionally wear around the house.  Because the prescription was so old, though, these glasses were a tad blurry, enough so that if I needed to look more than a few feet ahead of me I'd quickly get a headache. I decided that I needed to go to an optician and get a new pair. But I had a problem: the optician that I'd used since I'd moved to Northern Kentucky six years before had moved out of the area. So I needed to find a new place. Since my family lived in Florence at the time, I decided to go to the Lenscrafters inside Florence Mall.

I called Lenscrafters and made an appointment, and they told me that since it was my first time visiting they did NOT want me to wear my contacts to the appointment. So I left them at home, put on my glasses, and drove in a slightly blurry haze to the mall (thank goodness I didn't get in an accident or get pulled over).

I had planned to purchase new lenses AND frames, but I found I really couldn't afford them. My wife had just given birth to our first child a few weeks before, and we were both just starting to get used to the idea that she wouldn't be working anymore and that money was tight. And I knew that glasses would be expensive, but I didn't think they'd be as expensive as they turned out to be. As heavy as my prescription was, the optician advised me (wisely) to purchase "Featherweight" lenses, which were brand new at the time. They were thinner and lighter than traditional glass lenses, but they cost several hundred dollars. Working on a budget derived from a six year teacher's salary, I just couldn't afford an additional two hundred dollars for frames.

"That's no problem," the woman working at the counter told me. "We can make new lenses and put them in your old frames." That seemed like a great idea to me, so I gave her my frames. She put them in an envelope, stuck my prescription in the envelope as well, and stuck it all in a tray. "They'll be ready in an hour." Then she hesitated. "As busy as we are today, it may be a little more than an hour. Come back in an hour and a half."

"Sure," I said happily. "Thanks." And I headed out of the store, oblivious to the obvious problem that hit me about four seconds later.

I was blind as a bat.

I stood at the entrance of the Lenscrafters store for about 20 seconds, staring out at the rest of the mall. Lenscrafters was on the second floor, so I slowly made my way to the overlook of the first floor and saw something that looked like this:

I carefully worked my way back into the Lenscrafters store and asked if I could borrow their phone (Yes, this was in that magical time BEFORE cell phones). I called my house, and my wife answered.

"Hello?" she said unsurely (Yes, this was in that magical time BEFORE Caller ID), but in a VERY soothing voice.

"It's me," I said. "What are you doing?"

Again she spoke in that soothing voice. "I am lying on the couch with the baby on my chest. She has FINALLY fallen asleep." Before I'd left for Lenscrafters my wife and I had literally spent hours trying to get our daughter to fall asleep. Rocking, singing, swaying the baby--nothing had worked. But it sounded like Lisa had succeeded at long last.

"Uh, can you come to the Florence Mall?" I asked.

"Why? What's happened?" Lisa asked. Still the calming voice.

"Nothing's happened," I said. "They're making my lenses now, but they're putting the new lenses in my old frames, so I don't have my glasses. I'm kind of stuck here in Lenscrafters because I can't see anything."

"So what do you want ME to do?" she asked. I could tell she was irritated by the request, but she still spoke in a soothing voice.

"I don't know," I said. "I just don't want to sit here all alone for an hour and a half with nothing to do. Maybe you could come talk to me."

"Why don't you walk around and do some Christmas shopping?" she asked me.

"Because I CAN'T SEE!" I told her. "I'm liable to walk into one of the pillars holding up this place!"

"Well, why don't you just sit in the waiting area, then," she said, "and read magazines?"
"Because I don't have my glasses," I said.

"You're nearsighted," she said. "You don't need glasses to read."

"Yes I DO," I said emphatically. "My vision is so bad that I can't see a page of text without my glasses unless I close my left eye and hold the text about four inches from my right eye!" (And this was the truth, by the way, not an exaggeration.) "I'll look like an escapee from the insane asylum!"

"Listen," she said to me in a voice that was of a low volume but no longer soothing, "I just spent half a day getting our daughter to fall asleep. She's laying on my chest right now. You better believe there is NOTHING that would get me up from this couch. You are on your own." She stretched out this last sentence for emphasis.

Before you get judgmental about my wife, let me ask you this: have YOU ever spent half a day trying to get an 8 week old baby to fall asleep? If not, count yourself lucky. If you have, you know there's not much that would make you wake up that sleeping infant. And I knew better than to press the issue.

"All right," I told her. "I'll see you in about an hour and half."

"That's fine," she told me, and then hung up.

I gave the receptionist back the phone, and I sat in one of the waiting room chairs. I sat there for what felt like hours. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything but the offensive Christmas Muzak playing on the mall sound system. And the seat back was hard. I finally couldn't take it any more, so I walked up to the receptionist and asked her what time it was.

I'd been in the chair 15 minutes.

I couldn't sit there for another hour and 15 minutes. I decided I HAD to get out of there. I'd thought about it in the 15 minutes that I'd been sitting in the chair, and I'd come up with a plan: If I could make my way to the railing overlooking the first floor again, I could put my hand on it and use it to guide me around to the elevator. The mall was only two floors, so I'd be able to use the elevator even if I couldn't read the buttons: the top button would be "Up" and the bottom button would be "Down." I'd go down the elevator and immediately to the left when I came out of the elevator was a coffee shop (This was BEFORE Starbucks had completely taken over the world--I think the name of this coffee shop was The Great American Coffee Company or something like that). I'd order a large coffee and sit in one of the chairs there at the coffee shop and wait for the hour and fifteen minutes.

And I managed to do this without too many problems, though I'll admit that when I ordered I wasn't entirely sure whether I was at the "Order Here" or the "Pickup Here" counter, but I got my cup of coffee so it didn't matter. What DID turn out to be the problem was how quickly I drank my coffee. If I'd had distractions like someone there to talk to me or--say, I don't know--vision, it would have been a stretch anyway to spend an hour and fifteen minutes drinking a cup of coffee. Alone with just my thoughts and the cup of coffee, I drank the whole thing in about ten minutes. I still had more than an hour to wait. So I decided that I would try to make my way over to the bookstore at the mall and--even if I DID look like an escapee from an insane asylum--try to read something. Maybe there were extra large print books there or something.

And this is where the interesting thing happened.

As I made my way to the bookstore, I passed maybe a total of 15 or 20 people heading in the opposite direction. And as the first of those people approached, I was immediately cognizant that something was wrong, something was missing. Some piece of communication was missing that I couldn't put a finger on. I had a feeling that I was going to walk into this person. As the person quickly approached I actually almost panicked. Then I decided that I would just sort of hug the rightmost wall and sort of lean in that direction and that I'd stare straight ahead as I walked, and I'd depend on the approaching person to take the other side of the open area.

It didn't matter. The person (a man, it turned out) and I walked directly into one another. Hard.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm really sorry."

"Watch where you're going!" the guy said gruffly and went on about his way.

Why should I watch where I was going? I thought. Why didn't HE watch where HE was going? He was just as much to blame for our collision as I was.

Or was he?

As I said before, I passed maybe a total of 15 or 20 people on the way to the bookstore, and in every case I tried to go to the right of the approaching person. And about half of the time I succeeded, and about half of the time I nearly collided with the oncoming person. I hadn't been imagining things when that first person had come towards me. There WAS some key piece of communication that I wasn't picking up on. And whatever I was missing was important, because I could tell that several of the people were--like the first man--VERY irritated by my actions.

I never made it into the bookstore. By the time I made it to the entrance of the store I was so intrigued by my new discovery (also, there were some bargain bin books in the open area just outside of the bookstore, and one look at them told me that trying to read without my glasses was going to be a lost cause) that I just kept walking around the mall, trying to figure out why I was almost running into people, or why--rather--people were almost running into me. What was I doing or not doing, or what was I not seeing, that was causing this?

Eventually I DID get my glasses and I was able to leave the mall. And I've had 14 years to continue my research (a.k.a. watching people as they walk towards me), and here is what I've concluded:

When we find ourselves walking head on towards each other and there are no clear rules about who should go in which direction, we actually quickly negotiate in non-verbal language with one another to determine who is going in which direction. And it's as effective as a blind bat's sonar, but apparently it requires sight.

This non-verbal language is almost universally the same:

• The instant eye contact is made, the approaching person will then glance in the direction he/she wishes to go.
• The person will turn his head slightly in that direction.
• The person will then lean in that direction.

I can't see my end of this exchange through my own eyes, but I assume that--if the oncoming person made these gestures first--that I probably unconsiously glance in the opposite direction in response. If I gestured first, I assume the other person is responding to MY glances.

And I think the reason I messed things up so royally that day at the mall is because I don't squint. My vision used to be SO bad that I never learned to squint to see better because I STILL couldn't see anything even if I squinted. As a result, as I approached people, I was looking them in the eye, at least as far as they could tell. I wasn't squinting. I didn't have my eyes closed. I was looking right at them. They had no way of knowing that what I saw was this:

So no wonder they were irritated when I was ignoring the communication they were sending me about where they were going.

I now surmise I would have been better off if I had NOT looked in their direction. If I had stared up at the ceiling, or looked down at my pants leg while walking, pretending to brush some non-existent dirt off of my pants, those same people probably would have known that I couldn't see them and would have steered clear of me. But by looking in their direction I gave the impression that I was communicating with them with nonverbally, and thus their irritation when we nearly collided was entirely justified.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been wanting to write about this on my blog for 2 1/2 years, and wanted to write about it in general for 14, but I never have. And one of the reasons that I haven't is that I've never really been able to figure out how--if I did write about it--I'd finish that blog entry. What's the point of all this? What are we supposed to learn? How can we synthesize the things I learned that day to come to a new understanding about man and God and man's place with God?

I don't know.

This is just something I noticed once, and that I've been paying attention to ever since. That's all. Nothing exciting. Which isn't a very satisfying way to end an essay, either.

But it's the only way I can.

Blind as a Bat, Part One

Here's a blog entry I've considered writing several times over the last 2 1/2 years I've had this blog. It's an incident that happened 14 years ago, and I've wanted to tell people about it, but it's so long and complicated and I'm not sure that anyone cares and I'm not really sure how to make it interesting, so I've always considered writing it and then abandoned the idea.Today, though, I guess I'm in a "What the hell!" mood, and I'm going to go for it.

Uh, that isn't an opening paragraph that grabs you and makes you want to read on, is it? Too bad. It's the one I wrote.

Anyway...

In the spring of 2004 I had LASIK surgery to correct my nearsightedness, so I don't wear glasses or contacts anymore, and I don't need them anymore. But I used to.

Oh boy, did I used to.

Before my surgery my left eye's prescription was -7.25 and my right eye's prescription was -6.50. I was SEVERELY nearsighted. It's difficult to explain to people who aren't nearsighted--heck, it's even difficult to explain to slightly or moderately nearsighted people--how debilitating vision like that is. The only way to show you, I think, is with pictures.

Here's a photo that I took in a teacher's classroom a few years ago. If a person with normal vision stood about 5 feet away from this wall, this is what that person would see:

The person with 20/20 vision would be able to read the classroom rules above the bulletin board, AND the "Make a Good Choice" sign on the bulletin board itself. Even the black on white "boxcars" on the train above the bulletin board are readable.Compare that with the photo right below here, which is what someone with mild nearsightedness--say -2.5 or so--might see:

The typical nearsighted person would not be able to read the boxcars and would have to struggle to read the classroom rules but would have no problem reading the bulletin board sign. Finally, here's what I used to see when I wasn't wearing glasses or contacts:

Not only could I not have read the classroom rules from a reasonable distance, I couldn't even have read the bulletin board. I would literally have had to get inches away from the bulletin board to see those 4 inch high letters. And the "boxcars?" Forget it! I couldn't even see that there was type on them at all. They would just look like white blobs on the wall to me.

And that fact used to get me in trouble. I remember an elementary teacher telling the class to do something, and when I asked for a clarification, she pointed at the blackboard and said sarcastically, "Can't you read the writing on the wall?"

"What writing?" I asked sincerely. The blackboard was a solid wall of black to me. But the teacher didn't think I was being sincere. She thought I was being a wise guy. And I ended up in the corner of the classroom trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. Eventually I think the teacher figured out that I couldn't see and moved me to the front of the classroom. But that didn't help. My vision was so bad that I couldn't see any better in the front of the classroom than I had in the back. Soon after I got my first pair of glasses, and I couldn't believe the detail in the world that I'd been missing before. There were ducks on the pond that I could see in the distance from the kitchen of my house. DUCKS! The day before I hadn't even known they were there, and now I could see their wings and beaks!
I'm not writing this in an attempt to make you feel sorry for my 10 year old self, though. I wrote all of the above to give you some background information before I tell you the story that I wanted to tell you today.

Uh.

Except that I know that people don't read really long blog entries. I've already exceeded the recommended length, I think. So I'm going to have to split this up into two entries. TOMORROW I'll tell you the story I've been waiting 14 years to tell!

What's one more day?

Here to Whine

I'm in Louisville today for a conference, which is taking place at the Louisville Marriott. It's a very nice hotel, probably the nicest hotel I've ever visited in downtown Louisville (minus the REALLY upscale hotel whose name escapes me at the moment and that I only visited the lobby of a few years ago). My favorite hotel in Louisville is the Hyatt, and I guess I've spent the most time at the Galt House, but this hotel feels newer, cleaner, and more upscale than either of them. It might just be my new favorite!

That said, my visit here brings up a complaint that I have with hotels in general: Why is it that the MORE upscale and expensive a hotel is, the MORE they charge you for every little service? If I stay at a Super 8 motel for $40 a night I get free parking, free Internet, and a free continental breakfast (albeit usually a nasty free breakfast). If I stay at a hotel like the Louisville Marriott, though, I'm charged $10-$20 for each of those. It makes a hotel room, which might not seem like a bad deal at $140 a night, turn out to be VERY expensive.

At least I wasn't charged to use the fitness room. The Galt House charges for that, too.

I didn't get much sleep last night. Can you tell?

Words to Live By

The skit below aired on Saturday Night Live a couple of weekends ago, just before the elections. And though it's being played for laughs here, I think the Vice-President may be on to something. It's not a bad philosophy for living life!

P.S. Sorry about the 30 second ad that plays before the video.




(I can't see the video.)

An Open Letter to Carly Simon

A few posts ago I made a veiled reference to Carly Simon's song "You're So Vain." Ever since I made that post I've been thinking about that song, and I've even listened to it a couple of different times. And what struck me about the song is this: I feel sorry for the poor schmuck who is the subject of of the song. Thanks to Simon's tight lipped reluctance to reveal who the subject is, the fellow has been getting roundly abused for almost 40 years now with no chance to defend himself.

That doesn't seem fair,  and so, I decided that I would write a rebuttal letter for this poor soul. And here it is:

Dear Carly,


It has come to my attention that, after nearly 4 decades of mystery, you have finally revealed the subject of your song "You're So Vain." You can imagine my shock when I found that I was revealed as the subject of your song. While I find the whole matter flattering, I nonetheless feel compelled to correct several assertions that you have made in your song.


First, at no time and in no way did I ever think that the song was about me. Like pretty much everyone else, I assumed that the song was about Warren Beatty. Why, Carly, would I ever think the song was about ME? You and I went on one date. ONE! At that was in 1967, five years before the song came out! And it was hardly even a date. We met for coffee after a friend of mine insisted that I meet you, told me how hip you were, and that I would love you. So we met at a diner on the corner of some street in New York City, and I regretted the meeting almost instantly. First, we looked ridiculous together, me in my business suit, and you in your bell bottoms, love beads, and tie-dye shirt. "Well, don't we make a pretty pair," I said just after hellos, as a way to break the tension.


You grabbed both of my hands hard and stared into my eyes with an over earnest look and said, "Do we? Do we really?" It was a little freaky, to be honest, and I decided then and there that, out of respect for my friend, I would sit and talk for a few minutes, but that I'd get out of there as soon as I could.


It was a miserable twenty minutes. Every time I'd try to talk about something sensible, like the war in Viet Nam or the economy, you'd start going on about something ridiculous, like shapes you could see in your coffee, or dreams you'd had the night before and what they might mean. As soon as I found an opening, I said, "Carly, this has been lovely, but I'm going to need to leave. I'm in kind of a hurry and--"


"--Yes, yes!" you interrupted. "Let's hurry out of here now. Let's leave without paying the check. Let's go back to my house and spend the rest of the day talking and--"


I stopped you, told you that I would never leave a restaurant without paying, and then I got up, paid the waitress, and walked out. That was the last time I ever saw you.


Second, I've only been to the Saratoga race track once, and that was in--oh, I'm not sure--but it was either 1971 or 1972, years after our date! How long were you following me? And yes, I was unbelievably lucky that day, and my horse won almost every race. But how close were you to me to know that? The more I think about your song, the more it freaks me out!


Third, it really bothers me, Carly, that you make me out to be some flamboyant, conceited, wealthy person. I'm not part of the uber-rich. I went to Nova Scotia because it's where my family on my mother's side originated, and I was trying to get back to my roots. It just happened that my visit coincided with a total eclipse of the sun. And I flew there business class! I don't own a Lear jet, and I've never been on a yacht, so I have no idea what I'd look like walking onto one. And as far as my scarf being apricot goes--I like bold colors. Get over it.


Oh, and I had to look up the word "gavotte" just now, so I'm pretty sure that--no matter what party you're referring to in the song--I wasn't doing that. 


Finally, I can now only assume that you are the Carl E. Simmons that keeps sending me friend requests on Facebook. Please, Carly, leave me alone. Get on with your life. To quote from one of your own songs, "I haven't got time for the pain."

Lack of Civility

I am so sick of the lack of civility in people these days. Three instances of it really got under my skin in the last few days. And I think I'd be just about ready to give up on the human race if it weren't for one thing I saw happen in that same span...

...I don't know. Maybe it's the political season that just ended. Maybe that's what's really gotten me fired up about it. I know that a few month ago I would NEVER have considered voting for Rand Paul. I even posted an entry on this blog asking Kentuckians not to vote for him. But then his opponent, Jack Conway, came out with that stupid TV ad questioning Paul's religion and making weird references to a time when Paul supposedly kidnapped a woman and made her pray to "Aqua Buddha." It was a dumb thing to do, it was decidedly uncivil, and it made me think twice about voting for Conway. In the end I grudgingly did so, but I certainly understand the people who moved away from him after that ad ran, an ad that turned a "dead even race" into a blowout.

But it's not just the political season that has gotten to me. Sunday morning I was at the grocery store stocking up on refrigerated goods (my refrigerator had been left open the day before and gotten to room temperature). I was in line at the check out register behind a Bengals fan who had a Chad Ochocinco jersey on. A man in his fifties--not some teenager, mind you, but a grown man halfway through his life--walked into the store wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, and when he saw the guy in front of me, he shouted--shouted!--in an angry voice, "Hey! You Bengals are a bunch of losers! Take that jersey off and I'll give you the jersey of a real team!" He grabbed his own jersey at his chest with both hands and tugged on it a couple of times. "Go on! Take off that piece of crap!"

At first I thought maybe the guy in front of me and this bellicose gentleman were friends, but it was apparent when the guy in front of me turned away from the man, looked at me, and said, "Who the hell IS that guy?" that he had never seen the man before.

"I don't know," I said simply as the Steelers fan, satisfied that he had gotten the better of the conversation, walked around the corner and into the produce section. "That's why I hate Steelers' fans."

But the thing that bothered me the most happened online, where a lack of civility is just the norm. I don't know why it is that way. I guess the seeming anonymity of posting things online makes people forget that they're human beings. I'm used to it.

But this time it got to me. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago (and as my Facebook friends and family are sick of hearing about), my daughter's high school marching band won the state competition Saturday. A local TV station covered the victory in a short 30 second segment, and then posted that story online. I went to the website to watch the video because I missed it on TV, and I couldn't believe the negative comments that users had posted at the bottom of the story. Many of the comments belittled the CHILDREN who had worked 3-4 hours a day five and sometimes six days a week for four months to build a show that would win state. Commenters said the band had cheated, that there was obvious favoritism, that the "little rich brats from Fort Mitchell" had paid off the judges because there were much better bands in the competition. Luckily, the news station monitors its comments, and they were all removed, so you won't see them if you look at the link above, though you will see the comments ABOUT the negative comments.

I just couldn't believe that people would be so petty, uncivil, as to make those kinds of comments about kids, especially my kid. I know that some of the users leaving comments may have been teenagers themselves, but still, didn't their parents teach them manners?

I would be just about ready to give up on humanity if it weren't for one thing that happened. And it happened at the marching band championship. Beechwood (my daughter's school) has a strong rivalry with Williamstown, a band from not too far away, who competes in the same class. Every year the two schools finish in the top four in the state competition. Sometimes Beechwood wins, sometimes Williamstown wins, and occasionally some other Class A school in the state wins. But the two schools definitely want to best each other.

Prior to the finals competition Saturday night, the bands had gone head to head three times. At a competition in early October Beechwood had won and Williamstown had finished second, but at the regional competition two weeks ago and then again at the semi-finals this past Saturday afternoon, Williamstown had come out on top. So both bands knew they were close to one another going into the finals.

Beechwood was the first band to perform in the finals Saturday night, and they gave an almost PERFECT show. The entire band left the field giddy with excitement: they KNEW how well they had done. After their band director said a few words for them, they began the 1/2 mile trek (literally) from the field entrance of Papa John's Stadium to the parking lot where the band buses were all parked. I was with them, pushing a giant, oversized drafting table (Don't ask). I was walking alongside the color guard, who were all jumping up and down, laughing, and telling one another how great they'd done. About halfway back to the buses we encountered, coming in the opposite direction, Williamstown. They were the third band of the night, and they were marching to the field entrance that we had just left.

A couple of the younger girls in the color guard jumped in front of the other laughing girls and one of them whispered, "Hey, stop laughing! We don't want them to know how well we did!"

"Yeah," the other girl said, "let's all pretend to be crying. Let's pretend we blew it!"

There seemed to be a growing enthusiasm for this idea until the senior leader of the color guard stepped in front of all of them, held up her hands to stop them, and then said--with the tone of a school marm--"That is NOT what we're going to do." She motioned over her shoulder to the approaching band. "We're going to stand here, and as they pass by we're going to clap for them and wish them good luck. It's the right thing to do." And they did. I stopped just to watch, and then I joined in as the Williamstown band passed between the color guard and myself. The applause spread to the other members of the "prop crew" behind me and to the other Beechwood band members. As the Williamstown band passed by, there were no jeers, no shouts to take off those Williamstown uniforms and put on a "real" Beechwood uniform. All they heard were expressions of "Good luck, Williamstown!" and "Go get 'em, Williamstown!" and "We love your show!"

I don't think I've ever been prouder of a group of kids, and of one kid in particular who took a stand for civility.

More Over the Top Halloween

Last year I made a post about Halloween that included a short video about a neighbor down the street (actually, a couple of neighbors) who go all out at Halloween. I thought I'd share their decorating again this year.

They easily have a hundred dollars invested in their Halloween decorations...



(I can't see the video.)

Good and Bad

So this morning I wake with both good and bad news...

On the good front, the Beechwood Marching Tigers performed in the state band contest yesterday. The Class A semi-finals were at Butler High School in Louisville from 10 AM until 2:30. Beechwood performed at 1:45 PM, and they had easily their worst performance of the year. The wind played havoc with the band's props, blowing one side of the front "wall" down (which was distracting as the black boards that make up the wall starting "walking" in the wind before collapsing in domino fashion) and--even worse--blowing over the tallest flags in the "bridge" in the middle of the field, meaning that some of the band members (my daughter included) had to deal with the fact that there were big, orange, metal poles lying across their marching paths. The band finished second in the semi-final competition behind Williamstown. It was good enough to go on to the finals (the top four finishers in semi-finals do), but they finished a full three points behind Williamstown, which in marching band competition is a HUGE gap.

They weren't discouraged, though, and in the finals competition they absolutely NAILED their performance. Afterwards their band director told them, in effect, that it didn't really matter whether they won or lost anymore. They had been PERFECT out on the field at finals, and if they didn't win, then the other team just had a better show. I thought that perhaps he KNEW they weren't going to win, and he was preparing them for it. But that turned out not to be the case. In the end, during the awards ceremony at Papa John's stadium at 11:30 last night, it DID come down to either Williamstown or Beechwood as the other two finalists had already been named fourth place and third place. And the announcer said, "And the second place team in Class A is..." and held that pause for dramatic effect. When he shouted "Williamstown High School!" the fans of Williamstown cheered, sure, but the Beechwood contingent--all of us sitting together in one section of the stadium--erupted in chaos. We knew we had won! I have never been so proud of my daughter and of all of the members of the Beechwood band. They had worked so hard for that moment. We were so giddy that I hardly even noticed how tired I was on the two hour drive home last night (or...this morning actually).

On the bad side, though, I woke up this morning to find that, before leaving for Louisville yesterday morning, I had left the refrigerator door slightly open. EVERYTHING in the refrigerator was at room temperature, and based on the research that I did online, probably had been that way since about 3 PM yesterday. So I filled up two garbage bags full of ruined food, and I'm off to the grocery store in a few minutes.

Ah well. You gotta take the bad with the good!

I've posted video of the band on a couple of different occasions. Here's one more:

Still Yet Another Sign

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Frankfort at a KySTE event. Once it was over I had dinner with my parents and sister (Great to see you guys again!) and then headed out of town. On the way out of town I stopped to get gas at the Shell station that's right by the interstate on the west side of Frankfort. Just above where a user would put in his/her credit card was this sign:

I THINK the creator of the sign meant "DEBIT" card. Not sure if this was a Freudian slip or just a case of bad spelling, but it doesn't matter as the sentence makes sense either way.

Carly Simon was RIGHT!

The song below came out in 1977, when I was 8 or 9 years old. That's my excuse.

"My excuse for what?" you ask. My excuse for the fact that I thought the song was about me. I know it's ridiculous now, but in 1977 I was convinced that this song was about ME, or at least about someone who had the same last name as I have.

And before you laugh at me too hard, listen to what she and the background singers are singing. It sure SOUNDS like they're saying my name ("It's Sweasy! It's Sweasy! Whooooooah. It's Sweasy! It's Sweasy!").


(I can't see the video.)

That's One Billion, 210 Million Watts!

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how nice it was that my children had friends on this street. My younger daughter, in particular, has become very good friends with a girl just a couple of houses down, and I find her and her family very intriguing. Here's why. There are eight members of the girl's family: the father, the mother, and six children. In descending order, there is a son, two daughters, and then three more sons. All of the children are two to three years apart with the exception of the last two boys, who are slightly more than a year apart.

So what? Here's what: That is almost EXACTLY the make-up of my family growing up. There was my father and mother, my older brother, followed two years later by my older sister, who was followed three and a half years later by my younger older sister, and then three years after that I came along, and three years later my younger brother Kelly was born, followed by Donald 14 months later. This family up the street from us is almost exactly the same!

One of my favorite genre of movies is science fiction movies, and I especially love time travel movies like Back to the Future or Hot Tub Time Machine  or pretty much every third episode of any Star Trek series. And in every one of those shows, there's always the moment when the main character who has traveled back through time comes across HIMSELF in the earlier time. And the character always has this dazed look on his face as he realizes, That's me! That's me in an earlier time, and I'm watching myself!

I get that same feeling two or three times a week. Every time I see the fourth child (the second boy) in this family up the street I think, That's me! That's me back in 1974. It works out almost perfectly. In October of 1974 my older brother Tom would have been a sophomore in high school, which is the grade today of the older brother up the street. My sister Jane was in the 8th grade, the same as the older daughter up the street. My daughter's friend is in the 5th grade, just a grade ahead of where my sister Ann would have been, and every time I see her friend (which is about 5 times a week) I think, "There goes my sister Ann!"

And it's the one just below her that really intrigues me. He's six, the same age I would have been in 1974, and he rides his bike up and down the all of the driveways in the neighborhood, plays in the street with friends, and (to my chagrin) occasionally throws pebbles at cars as they pass. All things I would have done in 1974. And the two youngest children are toddlers, just as my brothers would have been 36 years ago.

And it's not just the children that are the same. Their house is a lot like my parent's house. Sure, my parents had a ranch house and this house is--like almost every other house in my neighborhood--a Cape Cod, but stand in the front yard of either house and look at them and the same thought will strike you: How do that many people even FIT inside that house, let alone LIVE in it? And the stay at home mother up the street has the same look of exhaustion that my mother had for pretty much my whole childhood, and the father, who works six days a week just like my dad did, has the same look on his face, too, one that says, "There are WAY too many people in this house for me, and I have a handle on what's happening at work, but at home things seem just on the verge of being out of control!"

So I don't have to pull out old photo albums. When I see the older brothers and sisters pushing the two younger children, both toddlers, around in their strollers, or when I see my daughter's friend and the boy right below her (Me!) chasing one another around their yard with sticks in a fit of anger, or when I see the mother running after the toddlers as they head towards the street, I don't see them--I see MY family 36 years ago. I've been transported back in time...and without needing to find 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.

A Terrible Educational Wall Poster

I don't know whether to be horrified or amused by this one...

This past work week I spent a couple of days in middle school classrooms working with students. I was explaining to them my school district's rules for usage of the Internet and email. They sign a big, long document explaining all of the rules, but it's SO long that I worry sometimes that the students don't understand it.

That's not important to what I'm writing about, though. Here's what is: Above the whiteboard in this classroom the teacher had placed a number of educational posters. These posters were meant to inspire students to exhibit positive qualities. At the top of the poster in large print was a good positive quality ("Be Courageous" or "Be Inventive"). Running down the left side of the poster were various ways that students could exhibit these qualities in a school setting. And in the middle of the poster was a famous figure from history that exhibited that quality.

As an idea, the posters were fine, and the poster that said "Be A Leader" and that had George Washington on it I had no problem with, nor did I have a problem with putting George Washington Carver on the "Be Inventive" poster. But THIS poster, as I said, made me laugh out loud AND cringe at the same time:

How in the WORLD do you pair Frederick Douglass with the idea of being cooperative? He was an escaped slave who--according to his own autobiography--learned to read and write with the help of the children of his slave owners, and who was beaten for attempting to get an education. But still he persevered, and when the opportunity presented itself, he escaped to the north, where he spent the rest of his life working for the rights of African-Americans. That doesn't sound like cooperation to me!

If, as a slave, Douglass had been given this poster, and if he'd followed the encouragement to be cooperative, he probably would have just accepted his life as a slave and worked hard to do what his masters said.

Maybe the poster should have said, "Be Courageous," for Douglass certainly was, or "Be a Role Model," for he did serve to any naysayers as an example of what blacks could become. But "cooperative"?

As I said, I don't know whether to laugh or be offended.

They're being redundant again! (Or...Still More Stupid Directions)

I'm preheating the oven right now, getting ready to make a fabulous Stouffer's Cheese Lasagna for dinner (Yup. White trash. But don't judge me. That's not the point of this post...). As I was preheating the oven I read the directions for making the lasagna, and step one jumped out at me. It says this:

The part that jumped out at me was right at the beginning:

"1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Do not exceed 400 degrees F."

Why did they feel the need to repeat themselves there? The first line of the directions was pretty clear: 400 degrees. I can't complete that step and at the same time exceed 400 degrees, so there's no real need to have the second line. 

The only reason one could possibly need the second line is if the author of the directions ASSUMED that readers were going to ignore the first line. But if they're going to ignore the first line, why would the author of the directions assume readers were going to follow the second line, either? They might ignore that, too. Maybe the author should have added the same line a THIRD time in case the reader decided to ignore the second line. And if we keep going, we'll end up with something like this:

"1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Do not exceed 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Make sure the oven is preheated to 400 degrees and not even a little bit over it.

No, not even 401 degrees Fahrenheit.

I know what you're thinking--how much of a problem can one little degree make? Trust me. You don't want to find out! 

Just take my word for it--don't go beyond 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Don't make me come to your house. Set the @#@#@$@#@ oven to 400 degrees!

In fact, considering the inaccuracy of YOUR oven, you might want to back it up to 375 or maybe even 350."

The directions could end up being PAGES long. 

Then again, if they WERE pages long, I'd have time to read them, because this thing takes an hour and a half to cook!