Holiday Meme

I got this from two friends already, so since my doing it seems almost a fait accompli, I thought I'd just as well do it here and call it a post. I tried to answer the questions before reading the responses of either person who sent it to me, but the shorter their answer, the harder that was. I'll not lay the obligation of sending this "to a whole bunch of people" on any of you though. Do with it as you will. Still, it was sort of fun, at least as much as I've done so far.

Welcome to the of Christmas Edition of getting to know your friends.

Okay, here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy (not forward) this entire email and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you......Tis the Season to be NICE!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Yes.

2. Real tree or Artificial? The last artificial tree I had was in college, and Carter was the president then (that's for you Buzzard). So, Real. Some years we trekked to a tree farm and cut it ourselves, mostly when the children were smaller. The last dozen or so, we just bought them already cut at either Lowes or King Sooper. The last two or three years, the really hard part was tying it to the top of a VW Jetta in blizzard conditions. The thing about teaching is that the Christmas season, when you'd most like to spend weekends doing family things, you're swamped with papers and finals to grade.

When I was a child, we always hiked into the woods at the old home place. Those are really cool memories. Dad had quite the eye for trees. Cedar was the most plentiful and it's what I remember most often as the family tree. Cedar and those huge multicolored bulbs.

This year, good question. I don't expect to be home enough to water a real tree here, and besides, whatever decorations I came away with are in storage in Colorado. Like college, I'm about half likely to go back to artificial or, more likely, no tree at all. But don't think I'll miss out. If things work out the way I hope, I'll get to find and trim a tree after all. And even if that activity doesn't quite come together, I can still safely expect to spend a lot of time this Christmas among children and parents that love them. What sort of tree we gather around won't make nearly as much difference as the company we share around it. Long answer. Sorry.

3. When do you put up the tree? Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving, unless it's really early, then the next weekend.

4. When do you take the tree down? Ideally one of the first two weekends in January. But, I have been known to leave it up until the cat couldn't tiptoe through the room without inducing a shower of dead needles. And I can just hear my fire chief father cringing at the thought of that. And in case you don't understand why, here's a video demonstration:

5. Do you like eggnog? Does Scotch Pine make good kindling? From Thanksgiving to Christmas, I try to slam a shot of it before bed whether I need it or not, though in truth, I don't really know what it would feel like not to need it. There's nothing alcoholic about it. I choose the shot glass because it basically contains about 100 calories per ounce. You know about calories, right? They're the things in food that make it taste good. Eggnog taste really, really good. :-)

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Probably my first or second bicycle. I lived on my bicycle as a kid.

7. Hardest person to buy for? My father. He has most things he needs, and he has admirably simple tastes. Long ago I sort of gave up finding the perfect gift for him. Now I tend to get him things I think he would never think of getting for himself and hope that they'll turn out to be useful or fun. I had to have children of my own to understand that he really doesn't care. A hug, a card, and to know that we love him--that's all he really wants. Heck, even the card is optional. Once I really got a grip on that, it became a little easier, but it's still no cakewalk.

Still, it's not angst-ridden either. He may be hard to buy for, but not painful. The person who's really hardest to buy for is the one you love the most but that you think needs convincing. Whether they're really going to measure your love by how amazing a present you find for them or not, if you think they are, you may as well film a Scotch Pine conflagration at close range--you'll come away feeling better in the end.

8. Easiest person to buy for? I think this changes from year to year. Not for everyone perhaps, but at least for me.

That said, I can't help but note that "Person whom it's the most fun to buy for," should be a question all its own, so I'm going to throw this out there too. That would be the person who knows how much you love them and has no reason to doubt it. Whatever you get them, they'll love, not because of what it is or how well it suits them or how much it costs, but simply because it's from you. It's not a test. Again, perception is more important than reality here. This could be the single aspect of this particular Christmas I'm looking forward to more than any other. This year, I get to remember what this is like.

[Note: there are nineteen more questions in this meme--count 'em. For those who might want to complete the exercise and send it on, I'm including the remaining questions here. Answering them will have to wait for another day. Scrooge is tired.]

[Update 20081125, 0134: You'll find the questions below answered here.]

9. Do you have a Nativity Scene?

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas Present?

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?

16. Lights on the tree?

17. Favorite Christmas song?

18. Do you stay home for Christmas?

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's?

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?

23. What theme or color are you using?

24. Favorite food for Christmas dinner?

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?

26. Who is most likely to respond to this?

27. Who is least likely to respond to this?

To be continued.

Reunion

I'm writing this quickly on Thursday night, because my life is about to pick up pace for the next few days. My daughter arrives in Charleston from Colorado Springs on Saturday (the day this should post, if I get this right).

We have cars to look at, movies to see, colleges to tour, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins to visit, feasts to enjoy, tattoos to discuss, beaches to walk, and general catching up to do. If I could, I would stop time on Saturday and just bask for a while in her presence. Our sons and daughters grow up way too fast. And you can tell a young parent, "You're gonna miss this," until you're blue in the face. Until that time comes, they really have no idea. So, rather than missing anything, I plan to enjoy every second of the next week, until I put her on a plane back to Colorado the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

I've been good lately about posting something every day. If I'm not so good this coming week, I hope you'll come back. With luck, I'll have plenty stories to tell by then. Just in case I don't make the time between now and then, I say up front, I hope everyone out there has a grand Thanksgiving in the company of the people they love most.

So I raise a toast to family
Put thanks in my glass
In the arms of your loved ones
It's the only home that lasts
--Edwin McCain

Peace ya'll.

Watershed Essay: the Assignment

I sent out an assignment to my composition students on Thursday. Today, Friday, they're turning in their research essays--really the capstone essay for the course. For the last essay of the semester, I thought they should have some fun, and see just how far they've come in terms of their writing. I plan on joining the fun. I thought the assignment (which I wish I could take credit for, but can only take credit for tweaking) sounded like so much fun I promised to do it with them. And the more I thought about it, I thought it sounded like enough fun some of you, those with blogs and without, might like to give it a shot as well.

Without further ado, here's what I sent out:

Here is your assignment for Essay 5, due in class, in hardcopy so that you may read it aloud, on the Wednesday after we return. This essay replaces the "Letter to the Editor" listed in your syllabus as Essay 5.

The attached .doc file is simply what follows, included here just in case anyone has trouble receiving attachments or opening Word files.

Watershed Essay

(Based on an assignment originally provided to me by Col James Rembert, himself something of a legend in the Dept of English at the Citadel. It came to him, I know not whence. In our profession though, the most flattering thing you can do for a teacher is steal his or her best stuff to use in your own classes.)

(Title: Anything descriptive of your contents, but must not be a sentence.)

Watershed essay—a description and analysis of the watershed event in your life, the incident or event that changed your life. Everything before the event was part of your life lived before this event changed you; everything after the watershed event is part of the you since then, the different you, the you with the new insight about the way the world really is, for better or worse. The incident or event can be something fine and positive, like catching the touchdown pass that won the state championship or hearing your father finally say he loves you; or, it can be something negative, like the car accident described immediately below.

1^st paragraph: The first sentence must be the dramatic high point of the incident, the watershed event in your life. A bad example: “I saw that at this speed I could not make the turn in the highway but must go over the edge.” That is not the dramatic high point. This description is better: “I felt the car leave the road and sail through the air as my girlfriend screamed and braced her hands against the dashboard,” or better still, “I found myself hanging upside down in the car, held by the seat belt, brake fluid dripping from the floorboard onto my head, and my girlfriend lying on the ceiling, bloody and moaning in a fetal position, her now misshapen face inches from my own.” That changed your life, not worrying about not making a curve.

The rest of the 1^st paragraph is simply describing what happened the next few minutes (only) after the event or incident: 911 call, police, ambulance, parents notified, etc.

2^nd paragraph: Begin a week or a month before the incident in the 1^st paragraph, and describe what led up to the event or incident. Pass quickly over the actual event already described.

3^rd paragraph: Describe the aftermath, the results of the incident. What effect did the event have on your life the next week or month or year? Make the last sentence of this paragraph precisely this: “I learned three things from this incident: that (blah, blah, blah); that (bleah, bleah, bleah); and, that (blooey, blooey, blooey).” Instead of that, you may use first, second and last. [For Lt Col Campbell’s class, because we are striving to shatter the image of three as a holy number in composition, you may reduce the number of lessons to two, but no fewer.] Obviously you may use the first-person pronoun (I, me, my, mine, we, our, us, etc.)

4^th paragraph: The first thing I learned is . . .

5^th paragraph: The second thing I learned is . . . (or: I also learned . . .)

6^th paragraph: The third thing I learned is . . . (or: Finally I learned . . .) [Unless you have only two epiphanies, in which case, adjust accordingly.]

7^th paragraph: Explain what it all means. You must use the words “what it all means” or almost identical words. You must use the word “means.” What you say in this paragraph must differ from the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th paragraphs. This last paragraph is just this: what it all means.

You must follow these direction exactly, precisely, if you want to make a good grade. If you deviate and do your own “thing,” believe me you will make a lower or much lower grade than if you had followed directions. Use no vulgarity, no sex (pick another watershed), no four-letter words, no informal diction. As usual, we are writing formal English. We will read these aloud in class. You will like these. Don’t hold back. The more honest the paper the better received it will be, by your classmates and by the professor.

I promise to let you know how it goes.

Typealyzer: Analyzing Your Blog

This, from Typealyzer:

The analysis indicates that the author of http://theyrodeon.blogspot.com is of the type:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generelly prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Analysis

This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.

Whatever it all means.

Hat tip: Lex

In the News: Snow and Bad Judgment

Not together though.

Saturday morning here it was 73 degrees when I went out to walk the dog first thing in the morning. Tuesday, it was about 41. That's a little bit of a shift. The best part though was getting a text from my oldest daughter in Wilmington, NC: "It's snowing here . . . SNOWING." Here's the article from Wednesday's Star News.

In another interesting article from the Charlotte Observer, some teachers are learning the hard way what they should have known already: that the person you hype yourself as on web social sites can come back to haunt you.

The warning reinforces what one elementary-school teacher learned the hard way: Last week she was suspended and recommended for firing after a WCNC reporter showed CMS [Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools] officials her Facebook page listing “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte" as one of her activities. Four other teachers faced milder penalties for pages that showed “poor judgment and bad taste.”

WCNC, the Observer's news partner, found the pages by searching Facebook for people who listed CMS as their employer. The teachers in question did not use a privacy setting that would have blocked general access to their information. The station found photos of female teachers in sexually suggestive poses and a black male teacher who listed "Chillin wit my n---as!!!" as an activity. CMS would not specify which of those pages brought discipline.

This is an issue of which I've always been painfully conscious. I have pages on both MySpace and FaceBook (and the lack of links here is not an accident) for one simple reason: I have daughters with pages there. In order to keep tabs on what's going on in their lives and to be sure that their own such sites aren't going to jump up and bite them in future years, it was necessary to establish a beachhead of my own.

A number of professors I know maintain a very visible presence in such places, even working them into their teaching. The breaches of good taste above are somewhat astonishing to me, but then thinking in terms of OpSec and InfoSec is rather second nature at this point. Teachers are people too, but that mantle of role model doesn't get hung in the closet at the end of the day, especially if you're going to hang out in the same internet venues as your students.

Revisiting the Mountain

I've been dreadfully busy lately, and haven't posted much original in the past few days. Nor today. Instead, since readership has more or less doubled of late, I thought I'd take this opportunity to revisit a post, especially since, last night in the wee hours, I sat here in Charleston, SC, and read this particular piece to my youngest daughter from start to finish. It was late, even in Colorado, but she couldn't sleep. You see yesterday she got to see something that NASCAR drivers are accustomed to, but 16-yr-olds in their first year of driving are not: another vehicle crossing both lanes right in front of you before hitting the curb, going airborne, and landing upside down in a sidewalk planter. She couldn't sleep. She wanted a story. She knew the tale of Daddy's plane crash and some of the family history, but I'd never shared this account with her, since she wasn't yet ten when I wrote it.

So last night, I read it to her over the phone, hoping I was able to get away with playing a few long pauses off as being for dramatic effect, then sent her the doc file and the mp3. If you're new to the blog and you've not read "See Off This Mountain," give it a go. I'd like to believe it's more the sort of thing people visit for than breakdancing videos. It's certainly more the reason I have a blog.

Professor Wikipedia

A post over at Barry's place reminded me of this video. My daughter in college originally sent me the link, and I promptly showed it to my freshman comp classes, adding it to the lesson I teach about evaluating web sources. Enjoy.

Breakdancing

No time for a truly thoughtful post today, so I'll just offer this up. I have tremendous respect for athletes, especially the non-traditional ones. I'm pretty sure the guys in this video could keep up with the folks from Cirque du Soleil on most days. Enjoy.

A New Baby Boom

An entire airborne division and then some has deployed and returned recently. Many of the soldiers were married. The result has been a new baby boom on and around Ft. Bragg, NC. Who'd a thunk it?

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Joanne Chavonne saw pregnant women everywhere in town, shopping at Target for diapers or dining at a Mexican restaurant.

The base has seen an estimated 50 percent surge in births.

Then she heard that so many families were calling the medical clinic at nearby Fort Bragg for the results of pregnancy tests that the Army had to install an extra telephone line.

And finally, over the summer, an administrator told her that the hospital on base was overrun with women in labor, and was delivering nearly 300 babies a month. “I was shocked,” said Ms. Chavonne, whose husband, Anthony, is the mayor here. “That’s 10 a day.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But Wanda McCants, a nurse on the labor and delivery unit, said she did not mind the extra work, especially considering the high rates of injured veterans that she sees around the hospital. “I think it’s the nature of war to come back and to want to create something,” she said. Seeing all the new life after so much tragedy, she added, “is uplifting for me, too.”

Amen.

The full story is in The New York Times.

Movie Review: Quantum of Solace

Update #2: I read over half a dozen newspapers' front pages daily, some large, some small. Among the small is the Wilmington, NC, Star News. There, of all places, I found this really nice article, published last night. It's less about the new movie than about the franchise itself and the relation between the books (yes, I've read them all), the movies, and the men who've brought Bond to life on screen. And for that very reason, all the more worth reading.

Update: Bottom line (in case you don't want to slog through all that below): worth seeing. B/B+

Saw this last night, at the last showing of opening night here in Charleston. Something of an act of faith, since yesterday morning I read Lawrence Toppman's review in the Charlotte Observer. Now I know how to value Toppman's critiques: not at all. He gave Quantum one and a half out of four or five stars (text says "By Lawrence Toppman (rates on a 4-star scale)" just below a graphic with one and a half of five stars highlighted--we'll see if my submission to the FAIL Blog makes the cut) and wasted a deal of time critiquing a few things that indicated he understood nearly as much about the Bond franchise as Harold Bloom understands about Cormac McCarthy.

If you're a Bond fan, you won't be disappointed. If you're a Daniel Craig Bond fan, you'll even be pleased. Craig is, I think, clearly the best Bond since Sean Connery. What the newest Casino Royale did was take us back to a purer Bond of sorts, a character more like the one that inhabits the books by Ian Fleming. Gone are the gadgets, gone are many of the tag lines. Craig's Bond is the first in a while that we might believe, like Fleming's, could start the day with scalding hot shower, finishing icy cold, if I remember correctly.

I'll never make much of a critic, really. The professional critic feels too obligated to point out every shortcoming of a film with deep analysis of its roots. This sort of exercise is less about the actual film in question than about, "See how much I know about FILM." So go read elsewhere if you want a good analysis of the film's shortcomings, especially its lamentably Bournesque elements, which you can't help but notice, sadly, yet they don't rob it of enough fun to make it worth seeing. Freneticism is here to stay in the action film, I'm sorry to say. Chalk it up to the tastes of a multitasking generation. If you want slow drama with long holds on facial expressions and pauses between lines that carry the weight of the world, this is not your film. Nor Bourne either.

So rather than belabor those points, I'll just mention two I think the film got really right. One is the switch inside Bond that Craig seems to capture just right. While others (Toppman included) may lament Craig's performance as one-dimensional, I disagree. And the scene that captures it best, I think, is his stopping long enough to cradle a dying friend in his arms, before depositing the body in a dumpster. The film's Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, is touched by the moment, then appalled by its brevity. "This is how you treat your friends?" she asks. Without blinking, looking back, or slowing down, Bond replies, "He wouldn't mind." That ability to feel, and to turn it off, is Bond, Fleming's Bond. The other incarnations of him have, I think, played along a more level emotional field. Put another way, Toppman see's Bond's emotional graph as flatlining; I see it as having a greater amplitude, if a lower frequency. Craig's Bond feels deeply, dangerously so, and his method of dealing with it, is to channel it. Other critics have read this as his being "a brutish pitbull." I disagree.

The other thing I believe they got right is the film's focus on water as the precious natural resource being hoarded here. We are less than a decade away, I think, from our first, honest-to-God war over water. More on that some other time.

Lastly, the film takes us back to an older Bond drink, the Vesper, from a time before a tag line, spoken first in Goldfinger, single-handedly changed the preferred principal element of a martini from gin to vodka. The drink first appeared in the novel Casino Royale, and was revived, appropriately in the 2006 film. From the original Fleming:

"A dry martini," [Bond] said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

"Gosh, that's certainly a drink," said Leiter.

Bond laughed. "When I'm...er...concentrating," he explained, "I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name."

-Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

I'll be trying this, just as soon as I can find that wine. Bond has six of them on the flight to South America in this movie. And still can't sleep.

Go see the movie. You'll not be sorry. And if you are, you'll know to go to Toppman for your movie reviews after this.

PS: The Wikipedia entry on "Shaken, not stirred" is worth the time, if you're any sort of a martini drinker at all.

Korengal Valley, Afghanistan

The difference between Afghanistan when I was there in 2002-03 and now? Then, we owned it, and were trying to figure out how to give it back to a more friendly government than the one we'd taken it from. Now, fight's on. We're trying to figure out how best to help the government we gave it to keep it.

For a sobering photo essay about the war we're now fighting in that country, pay this site a visit.

In Colorado Springs, people walk or run up the Manitou Incline for exercise.
In Afghanistan, it's how the troops get to work.
Hat tip: Lex

Snapshot: Marsh in Fog, Evening

Shem Creek. Short fishing pier, unfrequented. 6 p.m. The dark comes early now. Quiet but for the soft whrrr of heat pumps, the faraway sound of traffic, but all that muffled tonight by a light, warm fog. Someone's streetlamp visible half a mile away over pier or boathouse, but beyond that, the condos and hotel normally visible are shrouded. A tall crystal glass of some Aussie Cab/Merlot silhouetted against the grey. A conversation of canines across the creek. Mine rests silent at my feet. She likes the pier, I think--accustomed now to coming here, sometimes only to look out across the water and marsh grass and retreat, and sometimes, like tonight, to pause for a while. To listen to the occasional splash of something alive in the marsh. To allow the breeze, heavy with the weight of the fog to caress us. The crickets to stroke our ears.

I'm learning this place. Tides. So high this morning that I could almost reach down and touch the surface. So, to the chart: +6.9 feet, it says. Then +7.0 tomorrow, before a steady regression to more normal depths. Pull of the full moon.

Fog horn this morning on waking and again now. Took a while to believe it was what it sounded like. No idea where. Something else to learn. Less than three miles to the harbor from here.

Cigar tonight perhaps. Later. After dinner, some Addison, some Steele, a little Swift, and the ever pressing paperwork. Mentally recapping the day leading up to this quiet. Solitary office hours this morning. The afternoon at the Air Force base. Retiree ID card, finally. Register for TriCare Prime. Learn what it is to pay for my health care--a pittance really, compared to anyone else, but after so long at no cost, one more reality check. Ready to be done with that life, but not ready for this.

Walking back in, a conversation of fog horns in differing pitch, like a hearing test for the wide wet world. I press the button.

FAIL Blog

I think it was probably Lex's post the other day that initially sent me to the FAIL Blog, where you'll find lots of images like this one:
which, in and of itself, explains a lot.

Or this one:
which I consider the software version of the recorded message you get when you call your Internet Service Provider and hear, "For faster service, you can log on to our web site at . . . " It's all I can do not to scream into the phone, "If I could log on to your or any other web site, I wouldn't be freakin' calling!!"

At any rate, check out the FAIL blog if you need a brief pick me up. Now I just need to figure out how to submit a few photos of my own (or my daughter's in this case).

There She Stands, and The Gratitude Campaign

Veteran's Day has passed, but not without two moving e-mails from friends, both coming with videos.

The first video comes from perhaps the first girl I ever kissed, too young even to remember (though I do have this vague memory of sitting on the parsonage steps holding her hand), but reminded of it often enough by my mother to think I do. She has a beautiful family of her own these days, and looking at a photo of her, her husband, and their children recently, I know myself well enough to know that if her daughter's face is any bit a reflection of her own at an even younger age, she likely did steal (and just as likely break) my too young heart. How fast time flies.

The second I'll offer here because, newly retired, it's time for me to start saying "Thank you" to those who remain in uniform, carrying on the job I no longer have the privilege of doing. It hasn't been that long though, just over a month now. And it hasn't been three days since someone saw the parachute team sticker on my rear window or the HALO plate on my front bumper and said "Thank you for serving" to me. Even now, retired, the thank you's come.

But really, it's my turn to say thank you for younger hearts, stronger arms, even greater sacrifices than were ever asked of me or my family. If you've known me long, you know I think we ask too much, these days, of our young troops. Not as a nation, for I think the public is grateful in a way never before seen. But the people in Washington, the people running the war, the people making the decisions . . . they ask far too much with too little appreciation of the cost.

So if you have the chance to say thank you, do. I will. And if you ever think it doesn't matter, think again. It moves them, it moved me, often, to hidden tears.

The video can't be embedded, but if you'll click here, it will take you to the short movie. It's worth it. And I owe thanks for this to a newer but equally dear friend in the Pacific Northwest.

Election Aftermath: Obama Supporters

Okay, this falls in the category of LMFAO. Stolen from Buck, this is too good not to pass on. Be sure to pay attention to the text that changes in the lower corner of the screen as the video progresses. Oh, too funny. Way too funny. All my conservative friends who have been beating me up for the last couple of months will love this one.

What College is For

Just over a month ago, I wrote a long e-mail to a student of mine. He would say, I expect, that he was having trouble coming up with a thesis for an essay. I would say, he wasn't really trying. In my composition courses, I construct my writing assignments so that there are clear guidelines about the type of paper one should write (evaluation, cause & effect, proposal, etc), but I leave the selection of topic open. Everyone announces his or her thesis in class and we refine them as a group and everyone learns from everyone else's trial and error.

Not this student. He wanted me to tell him what to write about. He was unable even to come up with a poor thesis that I could help him refine. Sports. Basketball. That's all the help I could get from him. The essay in question was a comparison/contrast essay with two works of art as topic. It could be two films, two books, two poems, two buildings--you get the picture. I suggested he compare sports films, Remember the Titans and Glory Road, I think. When he sent me an e-mail basically throwing up his hands with regard to how to find the films and what to write about in their stead, my response was probably more than he was bargaining for.

For yucks, we'll call him Jake. I reprint this here, not for what it says about Jake, but for what it says about college, just in case I have any readers out there thinking about college, or who have offspring of an age to think about it. The choice to go to college shouldn't be a mindless one. It should be, rather, a choice. I reprint this here for the little help it may be to some facing that choice, or to others in understanding the true import of a choice they've already made.

Jake,

READ THIS CAREFULLY. IT PERTAINS TO MORE THAN JUST THIS COURSE.

You need to decide whether college is for you or not. And I don't mean this in terms of, "It's a cool thing to have a college degree," or "I like to play college sports." Higher education can be just a means to an end, i.e., the degree and a better paying job, but the whole assumption behind the degree being worth a better paying job is that a college graduate's mind will function differently from that of the person who only graduated from high school. Just as there is a similar assumption that the person who sticks with it and graduates from high school has something in their character and intellect that's missing in the dropout. (The fairness of either assumption can be the topic for another debate. For our purpose today, we need only acknowledge that these assumptions/prejudices exist and govern the playing field.)

College is only partially about storing away history, facts, and formulas, Jake. Done right, it's more about learning how to think. That is what you need to decide whether you want or not. Do you want to learn how to think? If what you really want is just to _do_, and to leave the thinking to others, then why drag yourself and your teachers through the next four years?

I'm not suggesting that you should leave. What I'm suggesting is that if you are going to stay, you begin to understand and engage in the process you signed up for by coming here. This letter is part of that process. Not every student needs to be told these things, but you are not the only one who does need to be told.

You say you don't read. Start. If it's difficult, get help. If it's difficult, come see me and I will help you get help. I am happy to participate in your educational journey. I will not, however, carry you. That is not my job.

I give my students flexibility in choosing the topics for their essays because they do a better job on things that interest them. It doesn't work if you rely on me to spoon-feed you. I didn't assign you those films, I suggested them because you were unable to come up with anything on your own. I could spend the time I've spent writing this letter trying to come up with a thesis for you as well, and trying to figure out how you can get access to those films, but, again, that is not why I'm here. That time is better spent writing this letter, inviting you to grow up, grow out, grow beyond the limited expectations you seem to have had for yourself to this point. Take charge of your life, your mind, your education. I will be happy to help you. I cannot do it for you. As Morpheus said to Neo, "I'm trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who has to walk through it."

You are on your own for locating the movies if you still want to write about them. (I'd start at the library though.) You are on your own for devising a thesis. I will help you refine a thesis. I will not give you one. I refine student's theses. Rarely do I pluck them from thin air. Take the assignment description from your syllabus and go to the Writing and Learning Center. Perhaps they can help. But if you do, go for their help. They are not there to do it for you either, although they may try.

If you are still stumped by the time of our conference on Friday, I will assign you a thesis and we'll see what results. It won't necessarily be on something you'll like writing about, but I'll try to see that it's on something you need to write about.

It's early in the semester for us to be at this point, but better now than after you've wasted weeks in an academic highchair. I want you to come in and sit at the big table. Welcome to college.

He left shortly thereafter to try his luck, I hear, at a community college for a while. Not because of the letter above, so far as I know. Whatever the reason though, I approve of his choice. He needs, I think, a little more time to adjust to the idea of seeking knowledge of any sort for its own sake. A recruited athlete, my sense of him from the little time we shared was that he was here for all the things that being a college grad represented; but, almost wholly unaccustomed to abstract thought, he had little interest in the process underlying his attaining that status. My hope is that in a few years he may return, ready this time for the journey he's signed on to. Paradoxically, he may have demonstrated more maturity in his decision to leave, for now, than a great number of students occupying the chairs of college classrooms show by staying. Either way, I wish him luck.

Have Something to Smile About: Sungha Jung

Go ahead. Give a listen. You won't be disappointed. More rewarding by far than anything I'm likely to write today.

Hat tip: Jay

It's Done

Busy over at the WLA blog today.

Cannot possibly express how glad I am that I will no longer (please, please) have to sort through all the warnings from my conservative friends that an Obama victory will herald the end of days. With luck, they'll be too busy now filling their fallout shelters to fill my inbox. For the record, I'm not in favor of all the man's positions. But I greatly prefer someone earnestly wrong to someone hysterically so. The former can be reasoned with. The latter can only be sedated or ignored.

Did I Mention That . . .

Not that this synchronized video contributes anything new (its point is that neither do the candidates, for the most part), rather, it's just fun to watch. Especially now that it's almost over.

Hat tip: Buzzard.

Snapshot: "I'm Not Dead"

A day at home, dedicated to the paperwork that ends a marriage. Funeral rites.

Coffee on the pier. Gray day. Sluggish backward flow of an incoming tide near high. Quiet trickle of leftover stormwater from a pipe hidden by pier planks. Brown pelican passing at medium height, winging lumberous down the upstream toward open water. Sound of slow wings. The egret beneath ingresses between marsh walls, stark white against muddy banks and brown reeds.

All the while a wake of buzzards holds congress, lining the siderails of the pier reaching from across the way, stacked on roofline and chimney next door, and nearest and thickest perched by the dozen in a dead tree stretched over dead water. All this under overcast sky. Darkly hopeful watch they keep. Fit weather and fit fowl for this day's labors.

And when one circles close to see what sits so long without movement, taking it all in, a flashback. Dark bird to bring such a light thought and true. Not dead. Not yet. Not hardly.


And clearly, I need to replace that lost camera.

A Little RW

It stands for "Relative Work." It means getting 2 or more skydivers together in the air to build formations.

That said, here's a political cartoon a skydiver can really appreciate:

"Which Tooth Hurts?"

Moods are a funny thing.

I wear grief today like the lead apron the dentist's X-ray tech drapes over you just before they tell you to "Bite down please" on a Lego block the dog chewed earlier.

Get behind the wall, get the shot, and get this off me--I'm ready to be done.

Voting from the Couch

A couple in New Mexico plan to vote for opposing presidential candidates for the first time in their 25-year marriage, and they've posted "his" and "hers" campaign signs in their front yard. Both campaigns are making a big push to get their supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

Lead photo from an article on getting out the vote. I should think if ever there were a place for a secret ballot, especially this year, the bedroom might be it.

Listening to McCarthy's The Road

A little over a year ago, my family and I made what would be our last annual trek anywhere as a family. We drove from Colorado Springs to Sunset Beach, NC. We took two vehicles, my Jeep Grand Cherokee and my oldest daughter's VW Beetle. For much of the journey, whoever rode with me in the Jeep consented to listen with me to an audible book. Somewhere just west of Nashville, I finished the book I had been listening to, and began listening to a work I'd already read, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

I'd had little success in interesting my spouse in anything McCarthy had written. His works are too violent and dark for her. Fair enough. But this book had been one of Oprah's selections, so I thought it might at least be tolerable. Still, that wasn't the primary reason I wanted to listen to it as we made that last day's journey. The more important reason would be that, driving I-40 across the Appalachians, and knowing that McCarthy never writes about a place he hasn't personally set foot, I knew that much of the terrain we would be covering would be that which McCarthy had in mind when he envisioned the post-apocalyptic world of this novel. And though I suspected it was not the NC coast at which the father and son finally arrive, I knew nonetheless that the dunes of Sunset Beach were much like those described in the book. I knew that the topography we would traverse, crossing the French Broad River east of Knoxville, and shadowing the Pigeon River through the mountains, and transitioning through the NC Piedmont and Sandhills and into the Coastal Plain, would mimic the journey of father and son in the book.

By the time we arrived at the coast, so had they, father and son. And when we finished it, finally, on the road one day from Sunset Beach up the coast to Wilmington where my eldest would begin her college career in another month, I was sad that it was over--much sadder than I had been the first time through it, in print.

Most ironic of all to have made that journey, already suspecting in my heart that it would be what it was, listening to a book whose central point may be that love is the only place where hope resides.

I look forward to the movie.

Slàinte an Rìgh, na Bàn-righinn, 's an teaghlaich rìoghail!

Or, if, like me, you need that translated: Health to the King, the Queen, and the royal household!

I'm behind and likely to stay that way in my reading of friends' blogs, but I took a moment over cappuccino this morning to catch up a little, and I learned that good friend Jay, aka "The Piper," celebrated a birthday a few days ago. I promised him a toast today, and in fulfillment of that promise, I here submit the proof: my glass sitting on the pier that projects from my abode into Shem Creek, across the harbor from Charleston.


The quality's not so good, having lost my real camera on the trip west with my daughter back in May. But you get the point. Jameson, on the rocks with a twist of lime. While pipes are decidedly Scottish, I've reason to believe that the "King" in this instance, prefers his whiskey Irish, and has the good taste, I think, to lean toward the distillery who's work is melting the ice in that glass.

Were it high tide, all that marsh grass would be awash, but such is not the luck at my morning and evening walks just now. Give it a week.

I was trying to explain to a friend (in the flesh) the other day how remarkable it feels to now consider some of my best friends to be folks I've never actually met in the flesh. Such is the blogosphere. But Jay, I have met, and his family. And I'll have to concur with Wayman Tisdale, a fine family it is.

Happy Birthday, Jay. Better late than never.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, Now a Movie

What rock have I been living under?

On the way to the Charleston airport yesterday to drop off a good friend who'd had business in town, we stopped at Barnes & Noble for him to purchase a book for the trip. Walking the center aisle, I came upon a stand of books bearing this image

and promising that the film, starring Viggo Mortensen (that's him on the cover), will be out in November. I didn't even know they were making one.

And, according to most of the press on it thus far, making it well. For a really good read about the movie, the actors, the process of filming it, a NY Times article from this past May is about the best thing I've found out there.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about that article is the high praise is lavishes on the young actor, Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays the son. "Lavishes" may be the wrong word. More accurately, it simply reports the near awe with which the rest of the cast and crew came to view Kodi,

an 11-year-old Australian who plays the son and bowled everyone over when he tested for the part, greatly reducing the anxiety filmmakers feel when casting a child. Some of the crew privately referred to him as the Alien because of the uncanny, almost freakish way that on a moment’s notice he switched accents and turned himself from a child into a movie star. Days after the filming of a climactic, emotional scene, people on the set were still marveling at Kodi’s performance. A couple said they had puddled up just from watching the monitor and needed to sneak a tear-dabbing finger behind their sunglasses.

With luck, this movie may prove as rewarding an experience as No Country for Old Men did. It will be interesting, though, to see what nods go to the screenwriter on this one. The Cohens won an Oscar for Best Adaptation of McCarthy's novel. I thought that particularly ironic, given that McCarthy originally wrote No Country for Old Men as a screenplay, nearly three decades ago. One can't help but wonder just how much "adaptation" they had to do. This time around, Penhall likely faced a more significant task.

The script for “The Road,” by Joe Penhall, is for the most part extremely faithful to Mr. McCarthy’s story of a father and son traveling alone through this blighted landscape and trying to keep alive the idea of goodness and civilization — the fire, they call it. The script does enlarge and develop in flashback the role of the man’s wife (played by Charlize Theron), who disappears quite early from the novel, choosing suicide rather than what she imagines will be starvation or worse. And of course the script lacks Mr. McCarthy’s heightened, almost biblical narrative style.

Some of that could be suggested by the look of the film, Mr. Hillcoat said, but mostly the nature of the bond between the man and the son, who in the script, as in the book, speak to each other in brief, freighted moments, would have to come out in the performances.

There are few movies I care enough about to attend on opening night. But this may be one.

Provided, of course, I get out from under my rock often enough to know it's happening.

Heaven Help Us

Over at Enrevanche, Barry's post today struck a nerve. What follows is my comment, posted over at his place.

See? See, Buck especially? See? This is why I'm fed up with my former party. This is the same BS as claiming that Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex. Low, dirty, shameful lies. Anyone who allows, "I'm (insert name here), and I approved this message," to go on the air with something like that can't be trusted to wash windshields at a stoplight, let alone serve in public office.

What shall I do? I dislike Obama's policies just slightly less than I despise McCain's, and now Dole's, tactics. Sitting on my file cabinet is a flag flown over the capital for me by Dole. Like Tommy Lee Jones's character from In the Valley of Elah I am tempted to fly it . . . upside down.

God help us all.

Mountain Bound

Light blogging this week. Mid-term grades were due. Light this weekend. Supposed to do two demo jumps: high school football game Friday night; college game Saturday afternoon. Both in the NC mountains. Neither likely to happen with the rain and low ceilings rolling in, but I'm due a trip to the mountains anyway. May just have to cuddle up and stay in. Life is rough. ;-)

See ya'll on Monday. Maybe.

Banned SNL skit

Apparently, reaction of Dems to this skit was so strong that NBC pulled it and is exerting every effort to make it disappear. But this is not 1984. Yet.

Click on the link. Go see it while you can.

Hat tip: JPL

More Alike Every Day

"You think your personal tragedy makes you special? It doesn't. What it does is make you like everyone else."

--A third-hand paraphrase of the truest thing I've heard in the last few months.

The Al Smith Dinner

This post pretty much duplicates one over at Buck's place, but I don't think there's a whole lot of overlap in our readers, so hat tip to Buck and here goes.

The following two clips from last night's dinner in NYC are worth watching. McCain's is worth watching because if he gives up politics, he could have a job as the next Bob Hope. His writers are awesome, and his delivery not only does them justice, but makes good lines even better.

Obama, not so much. Obama had decent lines, though probably none so good as McCain's, and then his delivery was just off--as if he were reading the stuff for the first time, and getting it with the crowd.

At any rate, here are both clips. Compare and judge for yourself. Heck, McCain's is funny enough to watch twice.

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.

Awesome Photos

I'm not even sure how I arrived at this site, but it's worth a visit for the photos.

Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand will bring his work back to the United States - to New York City for the first time in 2009. Aiming to inspire people to think globally about sustainable living, Arthus-Bertrand has been photographing unique views of our planet, seen from the sky, since 1994 - and has produced an exhibit of over 150 4-ft. by 6-ft. prints which will be on display in New York City at the World Financial Center Plaza and along the Battery Park City Esplanade from May 1, 2009 to June 28, 2009. When completed in New York City, the Earth From Above exhibit will also move on to California in 2010.

Jim Cramer on Colbert

After watching JT on Colbert, I decided to catch yesterday's Colbert. The guest was Jim Cramer. To see the earlier meltdown that Colbert refers to in the interview, pop over to Barry's place and see this post. Both are worth watching.

"My last prediction that was cut off was that your ATM will stop working. You'll go and there'll be no cash." --Jim Cramer

James Taylor on Cobert

Remember that trip back across the country in May? The one that included a stop for a James Taylor concert in Raleigh? Well, my daughter pointed out to me that he was on The Colbert Report a week ago. To watch the full episode, click here. The JT interview starts at about 15 minutes and runs to the end.

Enjoy.

Why I'm Leaning Toward Obama

Leaning, mind you. Much can change in the next few weeks.

There is an axiom that goes, “Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” (And it was not Winston Churchill who said it, though he’s frequently given credit.) If it’s true, that axiom, then like most of my life, my politics are backwards.

I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I think, for the most part, I still agree with most Republican principles, though these days, I consider myself an Independent, sick to death of the false dichotomies which rule two-party politics. Politicians of either major party I find to be a lot like too many evangelical Christians I know, backed by a philosophy and principles I can understand and appreciate, but that have too little effect on their daily conduct.

I know that some people stress that a vote for party rather than person is, in effect, a proper vote for those principles. I’ve bellied up and bought into that in the past. I don’t think I can this year. As much as I find myself on the side of Republican principles, I don’t think I can find myself on the side of Senator John McCain. I think that probably, once upon a time, there was a man and warrior named John McCain who would say exactly the same thing about the person the politician has become.

The reason an ad hominem argument is considered a logical fallacy is that it substitutes attacks on an opponent’s character for worthwhile disputation on the issue(s). Admittedly, in a presidential race, character is an issue. Sadly though, every attack I’ve seen thus far (in mainstream ads or chain mails) on Obama’s character has done more to turn me against the attacker than against Obama. The end result has been to make me a somewhat reluctant Obama defender. And in those instances where the attacks have come from the official McCain campaign apparatus—the ones that finish with “I’m John McCain, and I approved this message”—those have convinced me, in the end, that McCain made a conscious decision at some point that honor was a thing he could dispense with in order to win the White House.

Earlier today, I got a link to a video from a good friend. I’ve not hyperlinked the foregoing phrase because I want to qualify the video before anyone heads off to it. About the most insightful thing you’ll find on the page with the video may be this comment left by someone who had seen the video earlier: “Just one more proof that racist, idiotic ideas are not the province of one race or gender. This guy is a nutcase and his momma was a nutcase if she instilled vicious racism into her son. Sickening.” I couldn't have said it better. While certain historical facts contained in the video rant you’ll find there may be truthful, the interpretation of them, laden with prejudice, name calling, and utterly despicable inferences about the character of a woman the speaker never knew, are worse than sickening.

And, as near as I can tell, a number of the historical assertions made about specific events are true, but the conclusions one draws from those events can vary widely. I don’t recommend watching the video, but if you do, and if you’re curious to know more about the facts behind it, I would suggest going here, to a January 2007 article in the Daily Mail. The gist of that article is that most of the assertions in the more recent video are true. So? (Of course, the Daily Mail itself deserves some qualification as a source. I had thought of lamenting that journalism is not what it used to be, but then I decided, more likely, it is exactly what it has always been. See here for information on the Daily Mail, including details of more than one episode of its having been sued for running stories that were less than factual. So it goes.)

I can hear some of my friends already protesting a double standard. “How can I take McCain to task,” they ask, “for furthering falsehoods about Obama, and yet let Obama off the hook for being less than truthful about his father?” Well, how shall I answer? Like so: In the one case the falsehoods are designed to make a political opponent appear a less decent, less admirable person than he probably is, and to attribute to him actions he didn’t take and views he doesn’t hold; in the other, the falsehoods are designed to cast a family member, the teller’s own father, in a better light than he probably deserves. Can you seriously question the difference in degree of these two falsehoods? For me, they are telling.

The argument can also be made that, in some ways, the somewhat mythical construct of father that Obama has offered to the public has more relevance to his character than does his true sire with all of his human flaws. Obama appears to have had a loving mother who, for whatever temptation she may have had to give Obama the brutal truth about the man who sired him (and I’m sure there were moments when she was tempted), gave him instead an image of a father that gave us the Obama whose fate voters will decide in November. The truth is that both are relevant: the real Barack Sr. and the maternally constructed absent-but-better man each had a role to play in the creation of Barack II.

The Daily Mail article offers two good reasons to suspect this, both equally related to the roots of Obama’s ambition:

A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence only to learn that in Western terms he was basically a drunken lecher."

This ugly truth, say friends, has made Mr Obama ruthlessly determined to use every weapon that he has to succeed, including the glossily edited version of his father's story.

And the article's observation on a passage from The Audacity of Hope:

This tome contains one telling paragraph, in a section in which he fumbles to try to justify his abrupt leap into the national political arena: he is, he says, chronically 'restless'.

"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady."

So, bottom line, while I might be a Republican at heart, in another month, I’m likely to cast a vote for character, and I find Obama’s more admirable, in the end, than McCain’s, or, more accurately, less suspect than what McCain, whatever he may once have been, has become. Because let’s face it, American politics of late has become even more a science of what to vote against than what to vote for.

Perhaps it was always so.

So Many of Me

[Note: It was a dark week last week, and this was written in the middle of it. But things got better by week's end. Exercise, I think, may have cured it--helped anyway. Did Crossfit workouts four of five days (more about that later). Too sore to be depressed. Thanks Lex.]

There are so many of me these days.

There is the teacher. He enjoys what he does. He enjoys his students, the freshmen particularly. He enjoys the works. The craftsmanship of Shakespeare never ceases to astonish. Things yet to comment on, unnoticed by others, and no time in which to do it.

There is the colleague. A recluse, mostly, these days. In early, office door closed. There late, office door closed. Wan smile and untrue answers protocol requires of polite questions. Deflection as defense against the rarer real concern. Never before so private. Never.

There is the neighbor. Friendly enough. That guy walking the beautiful dog morning and night. Politely conversational, yet unprying. Hardly gregarious, yet kind enough. Comfortable. Gone early most days. Home in the late afternoon and then home all through the evening. Quiet. Gone nearly every weekend. No one knows where.

There is the father. What to say? “The most important thing a father can do . . .” wasn’t enough. Now just to stay. To ride it out. To one day nap on a couch with a grandchild’s sleeping head tucked under his chin as once its mother’s was. Sustaining vision.

There is the son. There are two even. One almost his father’s clone, in mannerisms, in voice, in aspirations and resignation. Not wounded there, whatever Eldredge may think. Exception that, in so many ways. The other, wounded to the core in ways he’ll likely never fully understand and labeled “angry” over it.

There is the soon-to-be-ex. Him, I have no idea how to describe at all. He just wants it over. He isn’t bitter; just sad. He isn’t determined; just resigned. He wouldn’t go back; nothing has changed. He failed, somehow, at the one thing he thought most important. He isn’t procrastinating; he is paralyzed. He will be seeking help for this, for inertia he must yet cannot overcome. As fascinating, that, as psychosomatic pain. Phobia in another form. Shameful. Infuriating. And no object for disdain or fury but self.

Lou was right.

But there is one more. Tender. Hopeful. Sheltered. Understood. Under repair. If not whole, then at least gathering the pieces. Focused on, mindful of, longing for the one place where everything works.

Palin as Palin

It seems only fair, if I'm going to post Tina Fey's genuinely wonderful skits as Palin, to also post this video, edited for The Huffington Post, of some of Palin's own genuinely solid moments in past debates:

I think this is likely to be one of the most, if not the most, widely watched debates in American political history. It may be that there is nothing less than the election itself at stake. I don't believe the McCain/Palin ticket can win it tonight, but I think they could see it slip completely beyond their grasp if Palin doesn't redeem herself. High stakes.

Tina Fey is a Genius

Tonight's debate will no doubt either help dispel this image or seal it for good. In the meantime, enjoy:



Hat tip: Barry

Under All

With the Air Force vs Navy game approaching, it seems the Navy's exchange cadets in Colorado Springs came up with an answer to the new Air Force slogan, "Above All." Over at Lex's place, he posted this today.
Now that is potentially the best inter-service spirit mission I've seen in 31 years.

Guest House

There are those to whom explaining ourselves is useless. There are those to whom we can explain ourselves and rejoice that they get it. And, for some lucky few of us, there are those who get it so well that they explain us to ourselves. This, from such a one to rescue me from my own all-too-frequent-lately dark days:

Of course there are days where you would feel depressed. You have had the rug ripped out from under your feet. It's the shock of facing of reality versus expectations you once had. At 49, you would have thought you would be willfully sharing your retirement and second career with the original Campbell Clan under one roof, that you would be there to coach into flight your youngest as she begins preparations for college, that when you came home there would be someone who had likely at least started formulating an idea about supper and who could not wait to see you, you thought you would be Christmas shopping for your wife and with your wife, you thought you would still be jumping out of airplanes (THAT is what is wrong with you right there), and you thought you would be living in a place surrounded by good friends. Even your transitional aspirations of a yellow walled cottage with a porch have shifted considerably.

Instead, you are working for peanuts, up to your eyeballs in debt, getting a divorce, living in a white walled box with just your dog, working for a place that pretends to be more military than it really is, you have no idea where you'll be next year, there is no warm body in your bed (regardless of whether it puts out or not), and when you walk in to your apartment it is the wrong kind of quiet. Both your kids live far, you are constantly shifting your schedule to put others' needs before your own, the weight of tax and divorce paperwork presses, student grading and curriculum planning presses, and day to day, you go without the healing touch of another human. Swats on the back don't count.

And with the diagnosis came a prescription:

You need to re-read Rumi's poem Guesthouse. It is just for times like these.

So, for those of you who've never read it, here is Rumi's "Guest House." Peace ya'll. Doc.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
(from http://www.gratefulness.org/poetry/guest_house.htm).

Touch Me, Please

An article in yesterday's USA Today, states:

A new study from researchers in Utah finds that a warm touch — the non-sexual, supportive kind — tempers stress and blood pressure, adding to a growing body of research on how emotions affect health.

To which, all I could think of to say was, "Well, duh."

I have seen people holding everything inside let it go like a dam bursting because someone finally took their hand and looked into their eyes and said, "It's okay. I understand. I'm here for you." And it wouldn't have been the same without the touch. Touching--gently, firmly, calmly, reassuringly--says to a person, "I am willing to connect with you. I am not afraid of you. You needn't be afraid of me. It will be okay."

Of course, there can be too much touching, and there can be unwelcome touching, and I would never encourage anyone uncomfortable with touching to do so. There was more to Spock's Vulcan mind-meld than Roddenberry likely knew-- touch someone and they will know things about you, and you will know things about them. And for that reason, I'd never encourage anyone uncomfortable with human contact to go on a touching spree anytime soon. Anxiety is just as transmissible as calm through touch.

But calm is transmissible. Our souls can resonate with another like a guitar string next to a tuning fork. And to those whose natural pitch is calm, I would say, you are welcome to touch me anytime. The luckiest of us know someone like that and can't get enough of being near them. They touch us and the jangled dissonance of our stressed out psyches falls into sympathetic tune.

This is a case, I would say, of research merely quantifying what most of us already knew. Modernity and science "discovering" what many have known all along. Those many are called "touchy-feely" for a reason you know.

Or, as my favorite tuning fork remarked when I pointed out the study, "We're all really just mammals at heart."

So go ahead. Scratch my head and just see if I don't wag my tail.

Snopes This

Oh, but to stop the world a week or two. A month and I'd be caught up, and swear to stay that way for the rest of my life. But, alas . . .

There'll be light blogging ahead. I'll be on the road this weekend, flying halfway cross the country to see my youngest perform on stage. Yay!

Meanwhile, though I know half or more of my readers I likely share with my cousin anyway, I want to point the few of you who may not be regular readers of Enrevanche to this post. If I had but time, I'd write a fictional snopes.com analysis to go with it. Enjoy.