Them Damn Mexicans

I think I'm honestly becoming afraid of some people...

I was at the Fort Wright Wal-Mart yesterday looking to buy some produce (and as a side note, let me say that the produce at that Wal-Mart was unbelievably nasty. I already would NEVER consider buying meat from a Wal-Mart. Now I guess I'll have to add produce to that. Anyway...). I needed some jalapeno peppers for a homemade salsa I wanted to make. There weren't any jalapeno peppers, but I found a package of small, mixed orange and yellow peppers, and I started to pick them up when a man I didn't know grabbed my hand and said, "Don't buy those!"

"Why not?" I asked. Considering the state of the rest of the produce in the store, I thought maybe he knew they were bad or something.

"Because," he said as he poked a finger in my face, "it says right there on them, 'Product of Mexico.' Don't buy nothin' from them damn Mexicans--sneaking into our country and stealing our jobs!"

I looked at the man blankly for a few seconds, waiting for him to crack a smile and say that he was kidding. But the smile never came. Instead, his eyes got wider, as if he were waiting for me. So I blinked a couple of times, and then I said, "Uh, you know, these peppers are a PRODUCT of Mexico. That means that they were grown IN Mexico by Mexicans who did NOT sneak into this country. I'm helping them keep their jobs in MEXICO by buying these peppers."

"I don't care about none of that," the man said to me as he shook his head and turned away, probably assuming I was a lost cause. "I won't buy nothin' from them damn Mexicans."

And we let people like that vote in America!

Band Performance

So my older daughter is in 8th grade this year, and it's her first year in marching band. This weekend has been exciting for her and for us. First, last night the band performed half of their show at halftime of the first football game of the season, and this evening, after a full day practice, they had the official "Parent Preview Show." After a band booster picnic in the school cafeteria we all tromped out to the football field to watch the full show. It was exciting stuff.

Below is a video of Friday night's performance. Sorry the video quality isn't great, but I shot it with my digital still camera, which doesn't do that great with video. But for the out of town grandparents, at least you can get an idea of what it was like to be there.

I'll shoot a higher quality shot later in the season when they're all dressed up in their uniforms and have perfected the rough spots.



(I can't see the video.)

Update: My Daughter's Melons

The last time I made a post about my younger daughter's garden I mentioned that we were SICK of cucumbers, but that we had no signs of life AT ALL on the watermelon vines we were growing. A month and a half later, and things have changed quite a bit.

First of all, the cucumbers are GONE. We have one left in our refrigerator drawer, but the cuke vine shriveled up about four weeks ago and they're all gone. All said and done, we ended up with about 60 or so cucumbers, and we ended up eating about 40 or so of those ourselves.

The watermelon, meanwhile, finally started growing. I actually told Natalie that I was ready to give up on the watermelon, and I was going to pull up the vines because no melons were coming and they were growing into everything else, even making their way across the sidewalk and into our neighbor's yard, and through the fence and into the back yard. So I went to pull them up, but there was a single melon, about the size of my thumb, growing. And we finally picked that melon yesterday. And there are more on the way.

Here are some photos.

Fire

Last night the home of an acquaintance of the family's burned to the ground. I didn't know the woman nearly as well as everyone else in the family did (including my children), and I went to bed last night without thinking about it. I assumed it wasn't on my mind at all.

I guess I was wrong.

First, as I was jogging in the early morning and as I was heading down Dixie Highway a pungent odor hit me. "Something's burning," I thought to myself, "and it's not leaves or garbage. What's going on?" Then I realized: I was jogging past the woman's house that I had seen the night before on TV and on news sites on the Internet. Nothing was blocked off with yellow warning tape. In the dark I wasn't even sure WHICH house it was. But I had miles to jog and deadlines to meet, so I kept going without really investigating.

Later, I found myself saying something in a meeting that I'd never said before. We were talking about a change that needed to be made instructionally at one of the schools, and I felt that the change wasn't NEARLY enough. On a different day I might have said, "You just saw me cringe because I feel like that's putting a band aid on a lethal wound," or something like that. Instead, I heard myself say, "You just saw me cringe because that's like trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol!" I made no connection to the stories I'd seen on the Internet, the emails I'd received about donating money to this woman, nor the early morning jog. I was making a point, and I went on with my argument.

But just a few minutes later, in the same meeting, I heard myself again use an analogy I'd never used before. "We need to be cautious," I said, "but I know what you're getting ready to say: we don't want to wait too long. That would be like a house burning to the ground while we're all over in a corner saying, 'Do you think we should use foam or water on this fire? Should we use the tank on the truck or tap into a fire hydrant?' Meanwhile, the house is burning down!"

One of the others in the meeting whispered to me, "That's the second time in 5 minutes you've mentioned a house burning to the ground."

And that's when it occurred to me--I guess the fire impacted me more than I realized.

Busy

I haven't posted anything to this blog in almost a week, but that's because it's been INCREDIBLY busy in my family's lives lately. Here's what's going on:

• School started yesterday for the students in my school district. I've written before about how stressful and busy this time is.
• In addition, Lisa began her long term teaching job at Notre Dame High School this week, so she's gone all day. Her first day with students is TODAY. 
• The girls, though, haven't started back to school yet (Fun! Fun! Fun! Now we have THREE different school calendars to shuffle around!), so they've been staying home alone each day this week, and I've been checking on them throughout the day and coming home at lunch to be with them. They start school tomorrow.
• And if that weren't enough, we also have a contractor who has been working all week to replace the retaining walls in front of our house (You can see the old retaining walls lining the driveway in this photo.) So the poor girls, in addition to being home alone, have had to deal with banging and pounding all day long.
• Finally, Meredith continues to have band practice in the evenings from 5 to 8:30, meaning that we have to eat by 4:40 or so each evening. Coming home from work at 4 and trying to have a meal ready by 4:40 has been challenging, to say the least. 

So we've been busy...

Ticked Off by NBC News

Last night I watched the NBC Nightly News, and the final story was about how the entire archive video from Johnny Carson's day on The Tonight Show had been digitized and placed on the web...forever.

That was pretty exciting stuff. Then I went to the web expecting to be able to watch whatever episode of The Tonight Show that I wanted to watch (I was thinking of maybe something from the late 80's, when I was actually staying up and watching the show). What I found, instead, was that the website mentioned in the news article only had clips from the show, and that the website was REALLY an advertisement for the DVD collection that's for sale.

I went back and watched the news story again just now, and I'm ticked off. At no time does Ann Curry (who's not my favorite news anchor anyway) say that the catalog is FREE online, but it certainly sounds--intentionally, I think--that way. So in the end, the "news" story on NBC news REALLY was a commercial for an NBC show, and not news at all.

NBC, when I watch the national news, I want the newscaster to give me NEWS.

You can watch the "news" segment below, and you can visit the website by clicking here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(I can't see the video.)

Seems Like a Long Time Ago

I was driving today and found myself behind a car with this bumper sticker on it:

I'm pretty sure that the bumper sticker is not from the current election cycle!

It's actually pretty amazing to me how much public sentiment has changed in two years. I think it's changed because people were never really upset with the Republicans. They were upset that we were involved in two wars and that the economy was sinking, and the party in power was the one that got blamed.

Two years later, nothing has changed EXCEPT there's a different party in power to blame. 

So this time it's the Democrats who'll get pounded.

And the Republicans can just steal the bumper sticker and use it as is with one word changed...

The Zoo

This afternoon the family took a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. We've been there literally dozens of times before (we've had family passes for MOST of the kids' lives), and for the most part--after the first ten or so visits--there hasn't been much new. Sure, every now and then a new exhibit would get added, but it's pretty much the same.  but this was the first time we'd been to the zoo in a little more than a year, and I have to say--a lot had changed.

For starters, the old main entrance to the zoo is no longer the entrance to the zoo. It's now the BACK of the zoo, and the parking spots that used to be the prime spots--right next to the entrance--have been torn out and replaced with grass and a cheetah run.

And the giraffes are actually friendly now. I wrote a couple of years ago about the new giraffe exhibit, where the giraffes were supposed to get up close and personal with the visitors. Only back then the exhibit was brand new, and the giraffes were petrified of the people on the bridge and stayed as far away from us as possible.

That wasn't the case today. The giraffes now just hang out at the bridge during feeding time, waiting to get a cracker from dummies like me and my younger daughter who are willing to pay the zoo to give us food so that we can give it to the giraffes. It was fun, though.

What hadn't changed was how crowded the zoo is in the summer. But that's okay. It gives a festive feel to the place.

We purchased a family pass while we were at the zoo. It's good for a year, so we'll probably be back four or five more times between now and next August 30. So there'll be plenty of chances for more blog posts like this.

Flowers are Red

Today on my other blog--my work blog--I posted a version of the song below. Here's another version. I post it here for a couple of different reasons:
1) I liked both versions and couldn't decide which to use. On one hand, the live version below includes a description of WHY the song was written, but the words in the live version can be hard to hear. Worse, one of the band members drops the "F" bomb while Harry Chapin is talking. The other version (on the other site) has the words right there for you to read, but the images are kind of cheesy. In the end, I decided I would just post both of them, one here and one on the other site.
2) But more importantly, I think the song is very important--especially now that summer is almost over and school is about to start up again--and everyone ought to hear it.



(I can't see the video.)

My Thoughts on What's Happening in the News

If you don't CARE what my thoughts are about the news, you can safely ignore this blog post...

1. The Mosque being built Near the World Trade Center

I've gone back and forth in my feelings on this story. As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, the first time I heard of this story I thought it was a joke. There's no way, I told myself, that any Muslim group would want to build a mosque on top of Ground Zero! They'd know there would be protesting.

Then I found out that it was real, and I also found out that the mosque wasn't actually being built on Ground Zero itself but was instead going to be about 200 yards away, and that it was going to be just part of a larger project, and I thought, Who cares? It's actually kind of nice that a Muslim group wants to build a mosque dedicated to peace in that area. 

But now I've rethought the whole thing. I still don't personally have a problem with the mosque being built there, but if there ARE people offended, I think the group planning to build the mosque should cancel the project and build their mosque somewhere else. 

It's not that they don't have a right to build it there--they do. But why--when you're already a group with a target on your back--make things worse?

2. The Death of Google Wave

Google Wave was supposed to be the next generation communication tool, that would replace email the same way that email pretty much replaced fax machines. But yesterday Google announced it would no longer be supporting Google Wave.

I was as excited as the next person to try out Google Wave when it was first announced. After about a month of waiting I got my account, logged in, and...and..and..I couldn't figure out what all of the fuss was about. It pretty much just seemed to me like an email account with an instant messenger and a file transfer ability in it. It wasn't nearly as revolutionary as it was evolutionary. So I think I logged in a total of five times before deciding to forget about it.

3. The BP Oil Spill

I can't believe in three months that I haven't written a WORD about the BP oil spill on my blog. I guess the reason that I haven't, though, is that I've felt so powerless to do anything about it. I'm glad that the well has been capped, and I know everyone is mad at BP, but the blame really has to be placed on everyone. We need to find alternative fuels to oil and then we won't have to do ever increasingly dangerous things to try to get oil. 

4. The Gay Marriage Ruling in California

I think the writing is on the wall in regards to gay marriage, and that conservatives might as well give up this losing fight. I still waffle in my feelings about gay marriage. On one hand, the word "marriage" has ALWAYS meant the union in spirit and body of a man and woman, NOT of just any two people. Look at any dictionary written in previous decades and that's how it will be defined, and I hate the idea of us changing the definitions of words just to satisfy some political correctness. 

On the other hand, the words "human being" used to ALWAYS mean homo sapiens who WEREN'T African, so it's okay for the meaning of words to change as our moral conscience changes.

I still think that my solution to the gay marriage debate is the best solution!

The Voice of My Conscience

Friday I was working on a post for one of my other blogs, my work blog, and I was looking for a specific song by Harry Chapin.* As I was looking for that song I stumbled across THIS song below, which is far and away Chapin's most well known work.

And as I watched the video it occurred to me how influential this song has been on an entire generation. I've read and heard several times before and in several places that my generation of fathers is--compared to previous generations--by far the most involved in their children's lives. And while there are many reasons for that, I honestly believe that this song is an important one of those reasons. 

At least it is for me. I take my kids to the neighborhood pool a couple of times a week, and I'll often be sitting at a table poolside with a book or with some work that I need to get done, and inevitably after a few minutes one of the children will come up to me dripping wet and say, "Daddy, will you come get in and play with us?" And I'll  tell her no, that I'm reading or that I have work to do, and then I'll hear in my head the opening chords of this song, and I'll find myself stripping down to my bathing suit and getting into the pool. 

Even this post has been delayed, thanks to this song. My daughter came into the office Friday night and asked if I'd play Uno with her or at least do SOMETHING with her, and I started to tell her no, that I was writing a blog post about how I was involved in her life, and then I realized the irony of that and turned off the computer monitor and went and played with her. 

So thanks, Harry Chapin, for being the voice of my conscience for years now...

(I can't see the video.)

*You won't see the other Harry Chapin song on my work blog yet, though. I wrote the post in advance for something planned this Friday, which is when it will be on that site.