Dear Santa, Jet Pack, Please!

Dear Santa,

I'd like a jet pack and a cool GoFast jumpsuit. Please. I promise, I've been a really good boy this year.

There was a backup plan if things went wrong Monday when a man attempted to fly 1,500 feet across the Royal Gorge using a jet pack.

But it wasn't a good one.

"There is no parachute, there is no safety net," said the pilot, 45-year-old former stuntman Eric Scott, minutes before takeoff. "There is just 800 horsepower that should be able to get me there."

That was plan A. Plan B, if 800 horsepower didn't prove enough, involved falling short of the canyon rim, plunging into the shadowy abyss and trying to smash into one of the higher ledges to keep from hurtling the full 1,100 feet to the raging river below.

"I'm hoping I don't have to use those plans," Scott said.

Yeah. I'll bet. The rest of the story is here, including more photos.

And for anyone interested, here's an earlier flight:

Abraham Obama

Riiiight.

From the Colorado Springs Gazette:

An art piece that combines the face of President Lincoln with the face of Sen. Barack Obama can remain on the walls of local businesses.

. . . . . . . .

After a short investigation, the department decided that "Abraham Obama" is art and not a political endorsement, which would have violated city sign ordinances.

"It was decided that it was a mural," said Sue Matz, revocable permits coordinator for Colorado Springs.

2007 Word of the Year

An AP article in today's paper, in what seems an appropriate bookend to last week's announcement of banished words for 2008, announced the American Dialect Society's selection for 2007 Word of the Year: "Subprime."

Of course, the thing that I found most interesting about the AP article itself was that it didn't make it past the second sentence without using one of the words from last week's roster of the banished:

The group of wordsmiths chose “subprime” as 2007’s Word of the Year at its annual convention Friday.

That had to be intentional.

Also worth perusing is the list of nominees for word of the year. Especially useful to me, from the category of "Most Unnecessary" was Vegansexual: "A person who eats no meat, uses no animal-derived goods, and who prefers not to have sex with non-vegans." And I now understand how I, my unashamedly omnivorous self, became unnecessary.

"He who laughs, lasts." --from The Chaplain's Guide to Surviving Basic Cadet Training (1977).

Better to Give than Receive? Shopdropping & Secret Santas

Shopdropping

Here's an interesting thing to be on the lookout for: "shopdropping." I'd never heard of it before a short article in this morning's paper, but I can easily imagine the appeal to the right groups:

Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.

Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay and lesbian readings at bookstores.

Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section; personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books; and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards — their Web site address included, of course — and covertly plant them in sta- tionery-store racks.

Just fascinating. Wikipedia apparently considers it a subset of "Culture Jamming."

Secret Santa Lives On

In a better example (value judgment intentionally implied) of the meaning behind the axiom that titles this post, Dave Ramsey, on today's show, interviewed a successor to Larry Stewart as the Secret Santa. In many ways, Stewart's practice, as I understand it, captured at least the initial element (the performance of an unsolicited act of generosity or kindness) of the idea inherent in "Pay It Forward," a concept at least as old as our nation (see Wikipedia's citation of Benjamin Franklin as one originator) and popularized through Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel, published in 2000. The novel was made into a movie by Warner Brothers. The ideas of the novel find continuing promotion through the Pay It Forward Foundation.

Returning to the idea's more seasonal manifestation, the Secret Santa World homepage offers the following explanation of why these particular elves do what they do:

The compassion shared from one spontaneous random act of kindness is elevating, priceless and not easily explained. It is an instant connection between souls that can change a life forever. This is the experience of being a Secret Santa. Being a Secret Santa has blessings beyond words.

If you're interested, you can find more information on the Secret Santa program at SecretSantaWorld.net.

Don't Almost Give

Lastly, if you're not up to donning a Santa suit and can't afford to give away $100 bills to strangers, but you would like to find a way to give something to those in need, during this season and throughout the year, one more organization has been pretty vocal lately, at least in this area, with a series of radio ads that mildly irritate me with their blatant dose of guilt; yet, they did inspire me to visit the website while this post had me on the topic. The Don't Almost Give web site provides a wealth of suggestions for how almost anyone can get involved through volunteering in something of particular interest to them. It's worth a visit.

And while you're there, you can view/hear some of the "Public Service Announcements" and decide for yourself if they're hitting below the belt, or if the end, in this case at least, justifies the means. I'd be interested to hear, through comments on this post, what others think.

Merry Christmas to you all.

The Service Gap; One Clerk Too Many; The Most Important Job You'll Ever Have

Everything I know about service, I learned as a teenager, from my father and grandfather, working in our family store. I mean that literally. I can't think of a single thing I've learned since. I've been reminded of one thing or another over the years, but always with the reaction, "Oh yeah, I knew that."

Greet the customer when they walk through the door. Smile and say hello. Always ask if you can help them find something--even the folks you know probably know the store better than you. If you don't know the answer, tell them you'll find out--and do. If you're busy with something at the moment that you can't stop, acknowledge their presence and tell them you'll be right with them--people will wait patiently longer than you would think possible so long as they know you're aware of their existence. There is always something to do--stock shelves, pull items to the front, dust, sweep, put away carts, clean windows--in most service industries, you are paid for your time, not the tasks you accomplish; the sooner you learn this, the more valuable you will be. Employers, whether you know it or not, are constantly keeping tabs on what your time is worth versus your co-workers. And finally, the customer is always right.

The nuances of that last one are hard for many to grasp. Someone gives you a five, and as you count their change, they protest that they gave you a ten. Maybe you're dead certain it was a five. Maybe you're certain they're merely confused, or maybe you're certain they're scamming you. You have only one question to answer: Do you want them to continue to be a customer? If yes, then they're right--no questions asked. If no, then the rule that ended the last paragraph doesn't apply anyway does it? The awareness is key. You need to be aware that contradicting them, sticking to your guns on that five spot, may very well mean they're no longer a customer. Is it worth five bucks? Not likely. That applies to almost any situation where you and your customer may disagree. Giving in may cost a little in the short run from time to time, but it will almost always pay dividends in the long haul. This rule was the beginning, I think, of my awareness that truth will often fight its own battles, and that allowing it do so, after you've stated it quietly and clearly (see the previous post on Prof Kirkpatrick), will almost always raise your estimation in the other person's eyes far above what your skills at debate might. The next time you disagree, they will remember the outcome, and they will give your words more weight. If they don't, then they are simply slow learners and their opinion of you should have no bearing on your opinion of yourself.

The Service Gap

What, you may be wondering, got me started before I'd even finished my second cup of coffee this morning? An article on the front page of today's Gazette put a name to a frustration I and others have been experiencing more and more lately: "the Service Gap."

If you’re older than 50, you’ve probably had this experience:

You’re standing at a checkout counter, ready to pay, and the twentysomething behind the register is talking on her cell phone. So you wait, and wait, and wait, and when the clerk finally finishes her conversation, she offers not an apology, but a grimace that suggests you’ve interrupted.

Sound familiar? It has a name: the Service Gap. It’s business-speak to describe a phenomenon fueling plenty of holiday-shopping frustration: the difference in the way baby boomers and members of the “millennial generation” define the concept of customer service.

I disagree with just one thing. I think this has little to do with differences in definition. I think the clerks we're talking about here, the frustrating ones, have simply never been introduced to the concept at all.

This disagreement extends to the article itself. There are older persons quoted, both consumers and managers alike, who seem to blame it on the younger generation as a whole. Then there are hard working younger folk who disagree:

“They’re clueless,” said Franni Segal, 55, a travel agent with a degree in retailing. “They’re more interested in talking to their friends.”

When she was in her 20s, working on commission as an assistant manager at Bonwit Teller, she recalled, she and her colleagues eagerly courted customers. “Today when you go into a store, they’re not interested in your needs . . . With the kind of service you get now, you might as well be on the Internet.”

But Sarah Collier, a 20-yearold Arcadia University junior who has worked in retail sales, said she thought her peers’ customer-service skills depended on their background and training, not their age.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily the entire generation. I think it’s just the individual,” said Collier, a hard worker who now sells time-share vacations for a Poconos resort. “I know how to give good customer service.”

Folks, Franni should just retire now. Sarah is going places. Sarah is going places for at least two reasons. First, if she's right and she does give good customer service, then she has a leg up on many of her peers. Second, her attitude recognizes that the Service Gap is fixable--Franni's fatalism is damning. I'll hire Sarah to supervise Franni in a heartbeat. Sarah will train her peers. Franni will just whine in the break room about how "untrainable" Sarah's peers are.

Franni has lots of company though. The world is full of whiners and fixers. The whiners drag us all down; the fixers help make it a better place.

My world is no different. I work at an institution of higher learning that likes to bill itself as "The nation's premier institution for developing leaders of character." Every program, every class, every activity gets examined for, must justify its existence through, its contribution to that goal. The problem with placing such intense focus on programs, classes, and activities through this "lens" of character development is that we lose sight of the most important factor of all: the people holding the lens. Leadership suffers from a belief that if we just keep raising the lens itself to the status of holy touchstone, and keep tweaking the programs under finer and finer focus, then eventually we'll get the output we desire: "leaders of character." Sorry. It will never work that way.

Leaders of character are molded through example and correction. All those classes and programs and activities matter, but they mean nothing without daily exposure to the right examples and daily correction and explanation of why what matters, matters. It takes me twice as long to walk across our campus as anyone else I know. Why? Because I am busy, as I walk, teaching. A salute is not a thing to be rendered silently. Proper courtesy demands that it be rendered with "an appropriate greeting." Being absorbed in your own thoughts or in a conversation to the point that you don't notice an approaching or passing officer is not okay. Lack of situational awareness in battle or flight will get you killed. The same lack, crossing my path, will simply get you an opportunity to have a conversation with someone much your senior.

Does that make me an ass? William Withers, "a communications professor at Wartburg College in Iowa who, with his colleague Patrick Langan, has spent years studying customer service," would argue that it does:

What’s the answer for peeved holiday shoppers?

Adjust your expectations — down, Withers said. Or be willing to pay more to shop and dine at establishments that have the time, interest and money to train their employees.

Nobody should waste their breath berating a young clerk or waiter, he said.

“Calling over the manager isn’t going to matter,” Withers said. “The server may still not look you in face. And they’ll be texting their friends about what an ass you are.”

Well, yes, if my conversation with these future leaders or current clerks took the form of "berating" then I would have to agree, even I would look in the mirror and see an ass. But as the candles on my birthday cakes more and more resemble a small bonfire and as the testosterone levels in my blood taper off, I find myself finally able to have conversations with clerks and cadets alike where my vocal cords don't tighten, my blood pressure doesn't change, and in consequence, my young charges defenses don't immediately swing to red alert. A significant factor in that capability rests in recognizing that the problem doesn't lie in the person, as fatalists like Franni would have us believe, or in the culture, as Withers would have us believe. We are the culture. We make it.

Culture is shaped by our own expectations and what we are willing to accept. If we follow Withers' advice and adjust our expectations down, then culture will head the same way, down. Is there anyone who believes that minimized human contact and interaction is an improvement? That interfacing with Overstock.com is preferable to the smiling face and twinkling eyes of the young clerk who made my eggnog latte the other morning and asked how my day was going? Maybe she really cared; maybe she didn't. Maybe she watches Rules of Engagement and took a lesson from the waitress at the corner diner who rebuffed Adam's hilarious rejection by telling him, "I'm a waitress. I work for tips. I flirt with all my customers." I tipped my barista well. If you tip servers who give you gruff service (the rules are different in NYC, I know, which is why I hope I never live there), then for God's sake, stop it! You're in the same class with those other officers who walk across my campus or through the halls of my institution and plop into a chair in the break room and complain about how cadets never greet them properly any more. "What did you do about it?" I ask. "What do you mean?" is the response I get.

Do something! Don't be willing to accept poor service. Do talk to the clerk, nicely, if you're the kind of person who can. Talk to the manager if you're not the kind of person who can talk to the clerk without feeling like an ass. If you're not the kind of person who can do either, or if you talk to the manager and get a blank stare, then talk with your feet and shop elsewhere. But don't complain and do nothing. You have the power to change your world. Use it. Whining just drags mine down too.

Listening to people complain is actually my job these days. It's not just tolerable; I even like it. Why? Because it doesn't stop with listening. If the injustice is real (and it isn't always), I get to fix things or to help people through the steps of fixing things themselves. Give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish. Sometimes the fish is a whale, sometimes a shark. That's okay too. I have a rack of harpoons. But, as usual, I digress . . .

One Clerk Too Many

Two final thoughts, mostly for whatever young readers I might have, beginning their journey through the world of employment, whatever form it may take. First, one of the best lessons my grandfather ever taught me in that family store came one day when I was leaning against the soda box chatting it up with a classmate that Grandpa had hired (probably against his better judgment because he would have anticipated exactly the scene before him). He came over to us and said simply, "You know, when I was a young man working in a shop over in town, I was talking to another clerk one day when the owner came over, looked at us both, and said simply, 'You know, I was told long ago, if you've got two clerks talking to each other, you've got one clerk too many.'" Grandpa walked away. Keith and I found work to do. I never forgot that line and all that it conveyed.

The Most Important Job You'll Ever Have

Lastly, I lied, when I said everything I learned about service was learned in that store. At some point after I'd left to don the uniform I still wear, I did pick up one other line that has stuck and is worth repeating here. Either as a cadet or as a young butter bar, I must have complained about the futility of some Mickey Mouse "additional duty" I had been assigned--pubs monitor, unit historian, who knows. "Let me tell you something," the mentor had said, "the most important job you will ever have is the job you have right now." Clichéd? Maybe, but I think not. By definition, a cliché has "lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse." That particular little nugget of wisdom, it seems to me, isn't used enough. It may even be that it needs explanation here, but I think I'll just let it simmer. You either get it or you don't. And in a society where "authorities" like Withers would argue that our disappointment is a result of unrealistic expectations rather than lackadaisical performance, maybe it's not useful anymore in society as a whole.

I can only tell you this. It's been useful for me. It was useful for my grandfather and father before me. I hope it will be useful for my daughters. And it will damned sure be useful for anyone who ever works for me.

Homework

“I’m not seeing the Service Gap,” said Susan Magee, an adjunct professor at Chestnut Hill College who has studied the millennial generation. “I just think they’re kids.”

Remember, she said, it’s the holiday season, and store clerks of all ages are busy and stressed like everyone else. “I think at Christmas, if the person can manage to say, ‘Hi,’ get my item in the bag, and not forget my gift receipt, I’m satisfied.”

She's right and she's wrong. They are just kids. No one is born knowing what customer service is. But if we're willing to accept poor service and call ourselves "satisfied," nothing is likely to get better. The world and the people in it have a way of living up to or down to our expectations. I'm pretty sure that's what The Secret is all about, albeit centered on our expectations for ourselves. It works that way for others too. By expecting more of them, you can help them become better. What's difficult to master is the subtle difference between expecting things to be better from the outset and finding them so versus thinking they should be but not being surprised that they aren't. There's your homework. Good luck.

Update: Here's a link to the original article by Jeff Gammage, published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on 20 Dec. All block quotes above are from that article.

Perspective Helps: 3400 Christmas Ornaments

I have a good friend who really doesn't look forward to this time of year. The problem? A spouse he thinks goes a little overboard with the whole decorating thing. Perspective is really all important here. This story on a local Colorado Springs resident should help.

John Kerr’s tidy house near Wasson High School is festooned with outdoor holiday lights, with handpainted angels and bears and wise men. But that’s just a hint of the Christmas riches inside.

Kerr has more than 40 Christmas trees that hold more than 3,400 ornaments, and he’s inviting the public to tour his house at 2516 Fairmount St. when his sign is out.

“If we’re home, we let people walk through,” Kerr said. “We put a sign up that says ‘come in and count trees.’"

What I always wonder is just how obsessions like this begin. The article tells us that too:

Now retired from his post as assistant superintendent of Colorado Springs School District 11, Kerr still has the one that started it all, a Santa ornament he bought when he was 10.

That’s the year his mom put up a metal Christmas tree because “she just didn’t want to be bothered by the fuss and mess,” and he didn’t like it.

So, he walked to the S.H. Kress & Co. five-and-dime store at 23 N. Tejon St. and bought himself an ornament. The man working at a nearby tree lot gave him a branch from a tree, he put his ornament on it and marched home.

He’s been collecting ornaments ever since.

I knew there was a good reason, other than the wonderful smell, that we always have a live tree.

Of course, those come with their challenges too, like the first Christmas after we married, when we brought a tree home from the tree farm only to find the next day, after we had finished decorating it, that somewhere in its depths had been a spider web, complete with egg sacs ready to hatch in the warmth of a human abode. Hundreds, hundreds of tiny spiders greeted us the next morning. I think we had to bomb the apartment to get rid of them. That was 3400 ornaments we could have lived without.

Today's News

A couple of interesting bits from today's Gazette:

First, I know what I'm doing on Thursday night. First, I'm a guy. Second, I was in the Strategic Air Command, back when we pulled alert, sitting at the end of a runway, in a bunker, baby-sitting an aircraft for seven days at a time--I've seen a "hydraulic training film" or two. This will be worth listening too. The questions from a crowd of college students and others in this town, even more so.

“THE GREAT PORN DEBATE”: With Ron Jeremy and Craig Gross, 7 p.m., Colorado College, Shove Memorial Chapel, 1010 N. Nevada Ave., free; 389-6606 or 389-6607.

The second article I'll tag as an incidence of mild convergence. Following my post titled "Hang in there," on Monday, Phil posted a comment regarding a similar experience with emoticons. Turns out that, according to today's news, this is the 25th anniversary of the birth of the smiley face and every permutation of emotive punctuation that has followed since.

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.

Somehow, knowing that I share a birthday with the ur emoticon explains a whole lot.

Umm . . . Like, check this out

As an English professor, you cannot help but love this:

The just announced “Umm Like All-Star” list includes Britney Spears, who was caught uttering 73 “likes” and “ya knows” in a five-minute video interview on YouTube.

Read the whole article here, to find out which celebs like, you know, um, can't string, like, five, you know, words, like, together in, like, you know, a row.

Or check out the whole Umm . . . Like website.

How Find Good Barbeque

"One place is sort of expensive."
"Tell me how to get to the other one. Good barbeque is never expensive."

That's how I knew which one of three barbeque restaurants was the real thing in Cookeville, Tennessee. The other clue was, "Well, that place only does pork."

You have to understand, though, I was getting these directions from my innkeepers, both of whom were from Michigan. They had all the right information; they just didn't know it.

The real reason I logged on here tonight was so that I could print the blog from a couple days ago, and the Gazette article it links to. That should help them make some sense of all my babbling about "real" barbeque.

And this is likely to be my last post for a while. I'm glad to see Barry's keeping the keyboard warm though. Thanks cuz. Hope to see you in NC soon.

Edmund Ladouceur, one of my heroes

The last news article to attract my attention in today's Gazette announced the retirement, again, of one of the true heroes from my youth.

Edmund Ladouceur was the director of the Cadet Catholic Choir at the USAF Academy and probably one of the reasons I survived that four years. Every Sunday morning, and one night during the week when we would practice between the evening meal and Academic Call to Quarters, I shared the pleasure of his company with the rest of us who were fortunate enough to call him, simply, "Mr. L."

I came late to Mr. L's fold, having been reared a Lutheran in a part of North Carolina where there may have been one Catholic church in the whole county. I sang in choir from the time I was seven until I left for Colorado. Once there, I immediately joined the Protestant choir. I spent two years in that choir, singing every Sunday for a "non-denominational" Protestant service that didn't really much resemble what I was used to. But the setting was beautiful (the Cadet Chapel was once the most visited architectural landmark in all of Colorado; pictures here) and singing was my chosen mode of worship back then, so I was happy enough.

Then, during one evening rehearsal, the Protestant choir director threw a mini-temper tantrum not much worse than many others we'd learned to take in stride. The difference this time was that a particularly gentle-spirited soprano--on whom I had the kind of crush that just watching her elfin face from a distance was enough to make another week at The Blue Zoo tolerable--did not take that tantrum in stride. She walked out of the rehearsal. She didn't come back. Not to Protestant service and not to choir. In a supporting action, the exact motivation of which we won't begin to dissect here, I quit as well. But, for us both I suspect, choir was, as I said above, the way we worshipped. A couple of weeks later, I learned that she had joined the Catholic choir. "Why don't you?"

Catholic? Me? Uh, isn't that in Latin? It seems funny now, but remember, I wasn't yet even 20, and I don't know if I'd ever been within five hundred yards of a Catholic church before arriving in Colorado Springs.

So, one Sunday, I sort of snuck in the back to see what a service was like, fearing at the time, I think, that I might be captured and sacrificed before the service was over. It was like coming home. The service was much more like the Lutheran service I had grown up with than anything I'd seen in almost two years upstairs (the Catholic population at the Academy being smaller, the Catholic chapel is one floor below the much larger Protestant space). Having made that first step, I next found the courage to ask the Catholic Choir Director, Edmund Ladouceur, a man my father's age, if, perhaps, I might be allowed to audition for the Catholic choir. The rest, as they say, is history.

But it is history that literally mists my eyes even as I type this. I have never known a kinder man in my entire life. He was like my own father in that regard. And for the next two years, if I needed a fatherly ear in that era when a call from Colorado to North Carolina cost enough that I only made them every other week, Mr. L. was always happy to provide it--for me or for any of the hundreds of us who, through the years, have found ourselves so fortunate to owe him so much.

The happiest moments of my four-year career as a cadet were spent in his company in one way or another. I suspect most of us who knew him would say the same. From my first taste of Bailey's Irish Cream after a dinner with his family at his home to opening our road show with my best Neil Diamond impersonation, that choir and its director were the only things I ever missed about life at that place. He says in the article that his years at the academy were so busy that he "sort of neglected" his own kids. I hope they didn't feel that way. He seemed to me then, and now, like a man whose heart was more bountiful than the loaves and fish.

There are rare people you meet who touch your heart and make you a better person, the world a better place, and your life a richer experience in every way. Edmund Ladouceur is one of those people. I'll be surprised if there's room for everyone to get in the door at his final service next Sunday.

I'll let you know.

News of Note (to me)

I may have been offline, but I wasn't dead.

Among the articles that got my attention but weren't among the headlines, here are a few from the week in review:

• From the "Oh, lighten up!" file, there was a story in Thursday's Gazette about an e-mail making the rounds with neighborhood-specific Barbies (you really have to follow that link, and look closely at those two babies with Widefield Barbie) for southern Colorado. "Experts in human behavior say it’s juvenile, mean-spirited and a perpetuation of hurtful stereotypes. It could, some suggest, harm the self-esteem of children — and even adults — in the targeted neighborhoods." If the shoe fits . . . and believe me, as stereotypes go (founded in generalization based in fact) I have to admit, these hit pretty close to home. I would love to have a BMW convertible, Shallow Ken that I am. And stereotypes can play an educational role as well. I didn't even get Trinidad Barbie until my 18-year-old explained to me that Trinidad, Colorado, was the "Sex Change Capital of the World." Seriously people, laugh at it, get over yourself, and forward it to seven friends in the next hour or you'll have bad luck for a year.

• The Playboy Drill Sergeant thing has about played itself out, I think. Here's a follow up from Thursday's news, and probably, since there's a new issue on the stands now, one of the last things we'll hear about that. The whole story brings a whole new meaning to "force shaping."

• This piece from the "Yeah? Well read this!" file goes out to Nate, who's skepticism regarding global warming may be real or may be make-believe, but is a convenient target nonetheless (as, I suspect, he intends). Tucked away on page 10 was this little jewel, pointing out that, "Spurred on by an unusually warm Siberia, Canada, northern Asia and Europe, the world’s land areas were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January, according to the U.S. National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. That didn’t just nudge past the old record set in 2002, but broke that mark by 0.81 degrees, which meteorologists said is a lot, since such records often are broken by hundredths of a degree at a time." Yeah, it was cold here, but just wait for summer baby.

• From the "Things you don't notice until someone points them out, then see all around you" file, comes an article on how we keep track of time. I've worn a watch for as long as I can remember. Too long to even fathom at what point it became a part of my flesh. Without something on that left arm--a self-setting, sun-powered, dive-safe, Casio G-shock for everyday--or an Eddie Bauer classic for dressier times--my wrist looks naked and scrawny. But according to this article, "In a survey last fall, investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. found that nearly two-thirds of teens never wear a watch — and that only about one in 10 wears one every day." Wow. I live with teenagers, but I hadn't noticed this. Fascinating.

• From the "Goings on back home" file, this article about an English-only movement in Beaufort County, North Carolina, caught my eye this morning. It made for a particularly interesting read, arriving as it did, on the same day as an e-mail from a friend bearing this article on "the Amnesty Trail" from Wednesday's Tuscon Weekly

Finally, I have truly saved the best, from today's news, for last, but it is so important, it will get a post all its own. Stay tuned.

(The) Gender (and) Gap

Valentine's Day approacheth. As it does, there's plenty of advice out there on how to get it right, or wrong.

An article on the worst gifts seemed only partially right to me. I like beer, but I might like chocolate just as much. Ever since reading Generation X, around 1990, I've occasionally referred to myself as a lesbian trapped in a man's body. (For some reason, the lesbians I've known have never been amused. Unapologetically heterosexual and married to a beautiful woman, I sometimes feel like their prime candidate for the anti-Christ.)

There was also an article on the right gifts to give. That one came closer to right on.

My favorite from the past week though, at least so far as pointing out the differences between men and women, had to do with clothing. An article on Reuters about women and clothing said:

Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.

Could there be any better illustration of the difference between men and women? Ninety-nine percent of the men I know would give up any article of clothing you asked for rather than give up sex for a month. If you could guarantee them sex every night for a month, they might tell you to help yourself to the entire closet.

"Industrial Organic" vs Farmers' Market

A few days ago, I mentioned that Michael Pollan was going to be speaking at Colorado College on Thursday night. We went, and we took our 15-year-old daughter along. It was a great talk. I'll buy the book soon. In the meantime, we know more about the food we eat, and we know more about organic food than we did before.

A note about that. An article in today's Gazette opened with the claim that organic food may not be better for us. Right. And global warming is just a myth.

One important note from the Q&A. Asked which he recommended between industrial organic (the large chain variety) and buying local (farmers' markets, etc), Pollan recommended buying local. He explained that much of it is organic anyway, but warned not to ask in those terms. The government owns the "organic" label now, and many small farmers won't or can't pay for the certification. Rather than looking for a label, he says, talk to them. The beauty of a farmers' market is that the farmers' are right there. Ask how they raise that cabbage, what fertilizers they use, do they use pesticides. Face-to-face communication beats a govt label any day.

Carnivorous Morality

From today's Gazette, an article on Michael Pollan: "Think about what you eat, author urges. Consider processes, health benefits."

On Thursday at Colorado College, Pollan will talk about “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Searching for the Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World.” The title of his talk is a takeoff on his latest book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.”

The book explores the three food chains that sustain us: industrial, organic (broken down into largescale organic, such as Whole Foods, and local organic) and hunter-gatherer.

In his book, the perfect meal is the one he hunted, gathered and grew himself.

“It was perfect,” he says, “not because it represents any sort of practical solution to the problems we face around food, but because it was a completely transparent meal. It was one of those rare meals that I knew the prominence and the true price of everything I was eating.”

He’s not advocating everyone hunt down a wild boar for dinner as he did. “I really don’t think that a world with more people like me in the woods with guns is what we need.”

But he would like us to think about the source and true cost of our food.

“Our food chain has gotten very long and complex and brutal when it comes to animals for food,” he says.

And on Thursday night, I plan to be there.

I might have missed this article, but name was familiar to me because only days ago, Enrevanche posted a brief excerpt from Pollan's recent article in the NY Times. (If you want to read the whole article--and I highly recommend it--surf on over to the Enrevanche post and follow the link.)

But the real reason for this post is that Pollan's brief interview in the Gazette captured an important moral rule for me: if you're not willing to kill it, you ought not eat it. And if you are willing to eat it, you sure as hell ought not cast any stones at those willing to kill it themselves.

This became a rule for me back in 1990, when, living in Chapel Hill, I had an opportunity to go dove hunting with some of the boys from the fire department where I was a volunteer (answering fire department calls in Chatham County was about the only exercise I got while finishing a Master's thesis). I'd been married about three years at that point, and I might have gone hunting once before in that span, and if I did, I didn't bring anything back. This time, I brought back my limit. Not a bad day for a guy using a single-barrel 12-gauge that once belonged to my great-grandfather (great-great-grandfather of the author of Enrevanche). I was pretty proud. In the end, we had the next-door neighbors over for corn-on-the-cob, new potatoes, and four dove each, wrapped in bacon and broiled in a shallow pan of white wine. Before we got to that point though, we had one of those pivotal marital moments.

I swear to you, the look on my bride's face when I told her, beaming, of what I'd brought home, would have wilted all the corn in Iowa. You would have thought I'd just shot our Cocker Spaniel. I was flabbergasted. This woman was no vegetarian. My father still ran a general store that included a butcher shop, and there was no shortage of meat in our freezer--just not meat from animals that I'd personally killed.

What saved that evening was that our neighbors enjoyed the meal as much as I did. But before they arrived, there had been a tense moment or two as I pointed out the moral contradiction in that initial withering look. You can't condemn a man for putting meat (okay, morsels of meat) on the table, yet feel no compunction about buying Frank Perdue's chicken breasts at Winn Dixie. What saved the next week was that I knew better than to worry that our newly vegetarian menu was going to be permanent.

Bottom line: if you don't have the heart to take life to sustain life, then you need to embrace beans, rice, fruits, and vegetables. That's what Pollan means by a transparent meal, by knowing "the true price of everything [you are] eating." That's not knowledge everyone can live with and continue to eat the way they do now. It's why our family's grocery bill is higher than most. Because I've read Fast Food Nation and Deadly Feasts, and I've lived near turkey and pork processing plants, and I prefer not to be a party to that brutality so far as I can afford not to be. There are alternatives other than giving up meat, but as Pollan points out in that NY Times article, "real" food isn't cheap.

And just for the record, I'm okay with the people who condemn me for my rare hunting trips, provided they live their convictions. I can respect that. But no casting stones at the hunter if your glass freezer contains meat you wouldn't be willing to kill yourself. Beams and motes, brother.

What goes around . . .

I'm listening to Robert A. Caro's, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, right now (have been since July--it's huge okay, but two more CDs and I'm done), and if there's one thing I've learned about LBJ (besides the fact that he knew he wanted to be president before he could walk), it's that he was studiously careful, during those years that he was "Master of the Senate," not to do things, as a senator, that would set a precedent he might find restrictive and unpleasant should his ultimate ambition be realized. Today's news makes me wonder if Obama has read Caro's book.

Timing is everything

On more item from today's print news and then I'm done for the day. This just in: Military suspends Playboy-model Sergeant. (With hyphens, placement is everything.) And lest you think this only of interest in a military town, the NY Post ran the story on Saturday, with a photo.

Personally, I'm thinking that if the Air Force were trying to grow, rather than "Force Shaping," the Staff Sergeant might merit a medal. So it goes. I'm a little challenged, though, to figure out just exactly which Core Value she's failing to comply with. Integrity First? Service Before Self? or, Excellence in All We Do?

"I'm sorry, I didn't understand your response."

I hate automated answering services. Period. For the most part, I refuse to use them. My usual response, for the voice-activated versions, is to speak in tongues that would make me a celebrity in a revival tent. I find that gets me to a living human attendant faster even than repeatedly pressing zero.

There's hope though. According to an article in today's Gazette, some businesses are seeing the light.