Friday, April 30, 2010

Return to the Heartland

We’re back in Oklahoma right now for the first time in a couple of years. That’s one of the reasons I have missed a couple of posts this week. Between the rush of trying to get things ready to go and getting up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a plane from Charlotte to Dallas (no planes going from Charlotte to Oklahoma City without substantial layovers) and then driving 3 ½ hours to Oklahoma City, I just didn’t have time to get everything in there.

I thought I’d forgotten what 50 mph winds are like in the springtime, but in reality it was only after being asked, “Does the wind always blow like this?” that I thought, “Oh, yeah, I guess the wind is blowing,” did it even cross my mind that sustained wind might be a new experience.

On top of that we have the potential for true “Tornado Alley” weather although it seems unlikely – just an early morning squall line that’ll be out by 9. Given that our hotel is in the flight path for Tinker Air Force Base I’ve also had to provide reassurance that noises are in fact an airplane and not a tornado.

Some people get a sense of peace and calm when they go to the ocean. The waves crashing against the sand, the sounds of the gulls, the smell of the salt in the air all serve to feed some inner part of their being in a way that their home environment may not.

That’s not me. The beach is fine, but it never has soothed me.

It’s the open prairie that you experience especially in Western Oklahoma brings my mind to a state of calm that I don’t realize is missing until I return to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no desire to return to Oklahoma to live. Aside from the potential for 112 degree heat in the summer, wind chills of 40 below zero in the winter and a state government that continually boggles the mind with some of the repressive laws they pass, it’s no longer my home.

North Carolina is a beautiful state with pleasant climate and is where we choose to live now.

There are, however, two things about North Carolina that have bothered me since the day I first arrived.

First, the horizon is much, much too close, so you can’t see what weather is sneaking up on you.

Second, none of the roads will stay put.

I can deal with the horizon part. Other than when I’m truly in the mountains, the claustrophobia abates a bit and I can start to breathe. Besides, with a very few exceptions, they don’t have the roller coaster storms of the plains that you need to think about and prepare for in advance.

It’s the roads that really drive me crazy.

In the big square states in the middle of the US, roads are very easy to deal with. They go in straight lines to the cardinal points of the compass for the most part. Having travelled them since birth, if I were to be dropped on just about any one of them, I could find my way back home in fairly short order.

After all, if you go 6 miles in one direction and don’t hit a blacktop road (many of these grid roads being unpaved), you can turn around and go the other way the same distance and likely you’ll find it. Go either direction on the blacktop and you will hit a town with either a water tower or a grain elevator with the name printed on the side of it.

No problem. Probably since I’ve travelled these back roads almost since birth, the name of that town or village will tell me where to go to get home.

Roads in North Carolina, though, leave me feeling like an Alzheimer’s patient. I follow them to a destination one day and, when attempting to repeat the trip a week later find that the road has been magically picked up and moved some other place so that I end up halfway across town (or the county) with little idea how I got there.

Whole towns seem to move, as if tectonic plates were swiftly shifting while I’m away to rotate parts of the world 180 degrees from its former location.

It’s frustrating, and the GPS (which we lovingly call the “Wayfinder”) is often of little help. I do find some comfort in the fact that the satellites that guide people around are only slightly less confused than I am.

So it’s nice to be back to my roots again, where the roads all go in straight lines the way God and the United States Bureau of the Interior originally intended. Every mile there’s a chance to alter your course by 90 degrees in at least three different directions, albeit frequently at some uncontrolled deathtrap of a blind intersection. Finding your way home may take some time, but for the directionally challenged it’s not nearly as frustrating as it is where the roads follow whatever game trail happened to run along a ridge line through the mountains.

So it’s calming to be back where I have my bearings and know where I’m going. It will feed my soul for a few more months, when I’ll come back and get recharged again.

Oh, and the specific reason we’re here? Mom and Dad hit a milestone -- 50 years of marriage. They actually hit the milestone back in December, but anyone who’s ever been here in the winter knows that the weather sucks and besides, everybody’s too packed up with holiday stuff to fit one more celebration in there. Accordingly, we’ve delayed the dinner until the spring.

As my brother said, “We wanted to make really sure it was gonna last before we sprung for a party.”

Happy Anniversary, Wayne and Nonnie.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"Imagine" by Tim Wise

The following is a post from Tim Wise, who is a prominent anti-racist author and speaker.  It seems especially pertinent as we go into the election season once again.  I found this several places on the web, and am unsure where to credit it as the "primary" site. 

“Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black” – Tim Wise


Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure – the ones who are driving the action – we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Prom Night

Saturday was a red-letter day here, in a parental sort of way. Although our involvement was limited to merely advisory (and financial), it is the sort of thing that makes you recognize that life goes on.

It was Junior-Senior Prom for the twins.

The activity actually started weeks ago with our daughter searching for a dress. Our son was a bit less worried, tuxes being secondary in the fashion world. While her quest for the perfect dress covered several cities (her incredibly patient boyfriend in tow, a testament to the stamina of young love), one has to think that the boy would have gotten up on Saturday, tried to put on his suit from last year and recognized, “Oh, I guess it doesn’t fit any more.”

Well, maybe not that causal, but you get the idea.  After all, clothing for the guy is an afterthought.  He knows it's going to be uncomfortable, and the primary requirement is that it has to match the girl's dress.  He's hamstrung until she's made a decision and communicated that to him.

In our family, the big crisis came a couple of weeks ago. Finding a dress was an early success. It was then sent home with the boyfriend so his tux could match appropriately.

The day she went to bring it home from his house, though, it was raining and she lost her grip on the hanger and the dress went into the mud.

Not a nice clean water puddle, but into a puddle of red mud. The kind that doesn’t come out of the knees of your 7 year olds jeans.

Mud and gauzy fabric are apparently mortal enemies that instantly lock together in combat. Fortunately, her mom was on hand to address the situation and avert the crisis. Mom’s have magical powers to do all kinds of things, especially if you don’t watch what they’re doing while they do it.

The dress came clean without a trace.

Prom pics are harder than wedding pics because there’s not necessarily an expectation of anything that will continue beyond the big dance. We’d not even met our son’s date before they all showed up for the paparazzi parade at our house.  They're "just friends" and we may well never see her again, a shame because she was an absolute delight.

The pics are more complicated because after coming to our house they had to go do pics at the young lady’s house.  Then over to the respective houses of the couple who were riding with them for the same thing.  Then there's a requirement that they drop by their friend's houses so the faux parents that have been involved in these kids lives since grade school can take THEIR pictures of them all together. 

It‘s not inconceivable that the preparation and picture taking lasted longer than the Prom itself which, by all accounts, was “lame” because “they didn’t play any good music.” 

This seems to be the lament of prom-goers through the ages, since 3 cave men started beating on a rock and grunting rhythmically while their adolescents donned their best long tiger skin pelt or loin cloth and gyrated around the fire.

The after-party, however, got rave reviews. Other than to discern that the place was acceptable and chaperones appropriate for an overnight event, we haven’t asked a lot of questions in that regard. The assumption is that since no police or medical personnel were involved it was a safe and sane.

As milestones go, we’ve passed another one successfully.  It's hard not to feel proud when you see your kids all grown up, wearing adult clothes, holding the umbrella and door for their dates (well, sometimes with a bit of prompting). 

And then you realize that the future's going to be OK.  They're not quite there yet, but they'll be ready to head out to explore the world soon.  And it'll be fine.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Where There's a Will, There's a Way

I missed my post yesterday because I do have a real job that helps pay the bills and had to deal with something for a client. With his permission, I want to relate part of what happened and get on my soapbox. Names and locations are changed for some element of privacy, but the facts are without embellishment.

Bill and Steve are in their mid-40’s and had been a couple for almost 15 years. They’ve lived together in Western North Carolina for 12 of those years in a house that they built together, but which was entirely in Bill’s name.

During that time, they went to Bill’s family gatherings (it was his home town), celebrated holidays together, had dinner in Bill's parent’s home and did all those things that families do. It appeared that Bill’s family had worked through any problems that they may have had with the fact that their son was gay and had created a life for himself with the person of his choosing.

Bill and Steve did those things that couples do. They paid the mortgage and the bills, worked in the yard, went on trips. They replaced their appliances as they wore out, sometimes using a credit card that Bill had and sometimes using one that Steve had.

Being the same size, shirts, socks, underwear, jeans were all intermingled. There were no “Bill clothes” or “Steve clothes”, but rather a common closet of “our clothes”.

They didn’t interact a lot with their neighbors (they lived in a rural area) other than to smile and wave, but were very active with friends who had similar interests on the internet. Their virtual community was, in fact, much more important than their physical location.

They had a business together. Bill was the creative force behind it, while Steve was charged with managing the invoices, paying the bills, and making sure that the processes were managed to keep the customers happy. After almost three years of struggling, it was just starting to turn a profit.

Then one day Bill was in a terrible accident and didn’t survive. It was a shock for everyone that this man in the prime of his life was no more. His parents and brother were numb with the shock. Steve became a zombie for the first couple of days.

Then things started to change, very rapidly.

After 15 years of togetherness, Steve was allowed no input into the funeral arrangements. At the funeral, which was held at a church which neither Bill nor Steve had ever attended, Steve asked an aunt where to go before the service.

She sent him to the Fellowship Hall, away from the family in the Sanctuary. Nobody came to get him. Not one family member, of all the aunts, uncles or cousins came up to him to say they were sorry for his loss.

Nobody sent a single plate of food to his house.

After the funeral, he went back to his home, to the place he’d lived for 15 years, to try and figure out what to do with his life. Although there was a big hole where Bill had previously existed, there was still a business to attend, cats to feed, plants to water and bills to pay.

Then about a week later, the family said they didn’t want to talk with him any more. Bill's parents and brother cut off all communication. Steve knew something was up when, the following Thursday about 4:00 in the afternoon, the parents showed up.

They had a deputy and a locksmith, and were intent on having Steve removed from the house they now claimed as their own.

He was to pack a suitcase of “his” clothes, under their supervision, and leave the property. They had gone to an attorney and started probate proceedings on the estate. From a legal standpoint, Steve was a stranger to the estate. He would not inherit the house that he had helped build despite the pond he’d dug in the yard, the trees he’d planted or the myriad of other improvements he’d helped put in.

He would have to prove who bought the refrigerator, the washer, the dryer, the drapes in the living room and the rugs in the bathroom. Of course, any records that might have related to that (and in reality, who keeps those kinds of receipts?) were locked up in the house from which he was barred.

In an instant, he found himself widowed and homeless, and without many legal rights.

So the lawyers geared up to fight. It would be an uphill battle for Steve unless a Will was found. One which, since he was barred from the property, was unlikely to be discovered because the parents now stood to inherit everything.

Initially there were some attempts at negotiation. The family agreed to let Steve stay in his home an additional few days, but he wasn’t to remove anything. He was just to separate “his” stuff from Bill’s stuff and then they’d let him know what they decided he could keep and take with him.

Can you imagine trying to sort through your grief and at the same time pick out what you need to take and what you need to leave to go start your life over again? Having to inventory every single item in your home and try to remember when you bought a particular dish or lamp or table and then find financial records to support it? Or just having to live amid the chaos of a semi-boxed house for a week while trying to pull yourself together enough over the shock of losing your partner to think rationally and figure out where to go next?

All under the watchful eye of people with whom you thought there was a mutual affection, but who were now intent on keeping everything that was “theirs” by way of inheritance.

So I was busy with my “real” job yesterday, and missed the post. Sometimes, other people’s needs are more important than our routines and schedules.

Before I climb down off my soapbox, I want to tell you that this is not an unusual situation. Gay and lesbian couples who have not gone through the drill of getting all their information together and making sure their affairs are in order, and then keeping on top of those things to make sure that their wishes are honored endure this same treatment daily across the United States.

It’s very different than the rights afforded to traditional married couples. But is there any justification for it other than the imposition of one person’s religious beliefs on someone else?

Oh, a final comment. The specific reason that I was gone yesterday? It seems that while sorting through the socks to determine which were Bills and which were Steve’s an envelope was discovered. A used manila mailer that might have gone directly into the trash, other than the fact that it was in an unusual location.

Inside was a preprinted form that Bill had filled out several years ago, with the heading “Last Will and Testament”.

It’s not written by a lawyer, isn’t witnessed or notarized, but it is a Will and makes his wishes known. It needed to go to the courthouse for filing. It will be a long fight between the two sides, and getting to a final outcome will be both time consuming and expensive. But it lets Steve stay in his home for a while, and try to operate the business.

The relationship between Steve and Bill’s family is irreparable. Civility upon chance meetings at the grocery store may even be too much to ask.

You can never un-say what you’ve said, and actions sometimes say things the loudest.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Running Water

When it’s time for that annual visit and you’re approaching 50, the question from the doctor is no longer, “Do you have to get up to go to the bathroom during the night,” but rather, “How many times do you have to get up to go to the bathroom during the night.”

Fortunately, that answer for me remains “one”. That’s kind of beside the point, though.

Those nocturnal ventures give you a time when the house is quieter than any other time. The road noise is minimal (this semi-somnambulating tending to come sometime between 2 and 3 a.m.), and it gives you a chance you don’t have any other time of the day to truly hear the silence – or lack thereof – in your home.

So it wasn’t a good thing the other night when, as I stumbled through the dark, my thought was, “I hear water running.”

In an 80 year old house where everyone is asleep and has been for quite some time, the sound of running water is never a good thing.

We learned a few years ago that it’s something of which you must take immediate note – especially if it’s coupled with the thought, “my socks are wet.”

While it’s somewhat comforting to realize that you’re not just a victim of poor aim if the discovery is made upon entry to rather than exit from the bathroom, the reality is that washing your socks is much easier than replacing the ceiling downstairs.

In this case, sleep wasn’t going to happen again so I started making the rounds to the different potential places, hoping that I’d just left the hydrant outdoors on again. Eventually in the downstairs bathroom I heard the drip. Turning the light on, I saw the ceiling.

Bulging. Visibly damp. Discolored when it had been creamy white just a few hours earlier.

The culprit had to be from the apartment bathroom. 8:00 saw calls to the plumber with a plea for expediency.

Of course, these things are never in front of those little plumbing access doors that are strategically located through the house like elfin access ports. Nonetheless, we felt obliged to look there with a flashlight anyhow. As we took turns kneeling down in the bathroom closet peering through the darkness at 80 years worth of collected dust bunnies, water hit each of us on the head.

My next thought was, “This really can’t be good.”

Water should not be coming from above the 2nd floor, especially since it hasn’t rained in a couple of weeks. Some incarnation of plumbing renewal re-routed the original water lines overhead through the attic. Anything leaking up there was a catastrophe of significant scope.

A little more peering into the dark – this time up rather than down – and a faulty shower valve was revealed as the culprit. It was apparently leaking water between the tile and the backing and, when this space filled up, it was running down the wall to the ceiling of the bathroom below.

Like all things in old houses, it was nothing that money couldn’t fix. As plumbing repairs go, this was even reasonable. The new control came with a tub spout and shower head, so it’s all spiffed up right now. The worst damage to the house was what I did when I tried to open the “bubble” in the ceiling with a box knife, to let the water out.

Turns out it wasn’t retaining water and no diuretic was necessary. The morning was wrecked calling the plumber and going to pick out the new parts and things, but the repairs took less than a day.

Except for the fact that now the ceiling has to be patched and painted.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Why do we save things?

Last weekend, the newspaper offered a “free shred” day. Bring your documents to them, they’d put them on the shred truck and they could be safely disposed of without fear of identity theft or just general nosiness into one’s business.

We’d been talking about cleaning out things – boxes of old documents in the attic, dead legal files from cases long ago (some dragged across state lines), old receipts and tax returns and generally things that are no longer needed. The paper is just a precursor to books (11 boxes to the Habitat Store so far, and still counting), kitchen gadgets of unknown purpose and excess furniture that is crowded in the house but too good to just sit by the curb.

The hardest of the documents for me to ditch were the personal letters. I’ve long kept letters, some organized neatly in files, some still in their envelopes and just pitched in a box with the idea that someday I’ll organize them and put them in nice neat files.

We all know that day won’t ever come, but sometimes you have to look reality right in the eye and deny it.

Why do I keep these? If I’ve not opened a document to look at it in over 10 years, what’s the chance of actually needing or wanting to look at it in the future? Some of them, of course, would bring back nice warm fuzzies – we’ve always been a family of letter writers, so I had correspondence from my parents and grandparents going back to the time that I left home and went to college. I’ve had wonderful pen pals over the ages, some of whom lived right down the street but who needed the written word for our relationships to truly develop and blossom.

I’m not any less or more loved by the possession of those bits of paper, nor is anyone likely to read them after I’m gone. My presidential aspirations having waned, it’s unlikely that they’ll be needed for my memorial library in the future.

There are some exceptions, of course.  About what I decided to keep, not the chance of a library.

There’s a letter that my maternal grandfather wrote to me the day I was born.
There’s one from my paternal grandmother when I graduated from college.

Most of them, though, are the mundane. They talk about who’s visited, who’s getting married (or divorced), how the garden is doing and the weather. They offer no unique insight into 20th or 21st Century America, and in reality little about our lives other than the superficial.

Philosophy is pretty short, other than the inquiry, “Did you go to church last Sunday?” (Usually coming from Mom or my Grandmother.  That question doesn't come up any more). There’s occasional allusion to local politics, but it’s pointed out more in the nature of human interest stories (Do you remember X who was a class behind you in High School? He’s running for Y.”) Big picture politics are entirely absent, since my correspondents are sometimes on the other side of the great divide and nothing is to be gained by stirring each other up.

The only thing that would have happened with the majority of the documents is that someone would eventually have to do the same thing that we did this weekend – box them up and take them to the shredder. That’s what eventually happens to everyone’s stuff. For some people it happens when you move; for others, it’s after you die. Either way, the documents stay in the boxes and envelopes, the sheer magnitude of the task of going through them overwhelming everyone involved until they just give up and trash it all.

So we braved the attic, tried to do a quick sort to make sure there weren’t any $100 bills tucked in anything (there weren’t) and hauled 6 big bins of stuff to the shredder.

Only to find out that they were full up. Yep, the demand for the program was so overwhelming that by 10:30 in the morning they had reached capacity. Our noon deposit didn’t have a chance. Apparently more people than we thought are watching “Hoarders” and have determined that they have no desire to be on national television. They’re cleaning out before someone with a camera can come in to splay their lives across the small screen throughout the English speaking world.

So all our bins came back home. It’s in the basement now, rather than the attic, which makes it easier to move them around although that may be a detriment since it’s cool enough to work down there comfortably. The problem is that the lure of the hunt is there, the urge to go back and “make sure” there’s nothing that I need to keep that was overlooked the first time.

It’s like that last piece of chocolate cake that calls to you through the dark at 2 in the morning when you wake up and instantly realize that it’s still there. There’ll be no sleep until you get up and eat it. The only way to beat that urge is for it to leave the house entirely, so there’s no hope of reconnection.

I only hope they have another shred day before I can’t resist the urge and decide that I really don’t want to part with some particular items and have to dig in to try and find them.

In the meantime, can anyone think of a constructive use for Graduation cards from 1979?

Thursday, April 15, 2010

No Blog Tomorrow

There will be no blog posting tomorrow, April 16, 2010. I tell you this so that you don’t think I’ve just once again been lax in writing and posting something.

The absence this time is intentional and designed to prove a point; it’s in observation of the 15th annual “Day of Silence” sponsored by GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network).

http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/home/index.html

The event happens in middle and high schools across the country, and is intended to bring attention to the “voicelessness” of GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender) youth who are frequently bullied or otherwise abused by and in our school systems. Participants usually have cards available explaining what they are doing and why, and sometimes show their support in more visible ways – tape over their mouths, T-shirts, etc.

http://www.dayofsilence.org/index.cfm

Gay youth are truly one of the underserved segments of society. Daily they are subjected to actions ranging from a variety of indignities (name calling, books being knocked from their hands, pushing) to abuses that threaten their physical well being, if not their lives.  The sad part is that these actions come not only from their fellow students, who might be forgiven the cruelties of youth, but also from teachers and administrators who turn a blind eye to the activities. It can make their lives miserable and they deserve better.

It’s easy to feel alone as an adolescent. As a gay youth, it’s sometimes even lonelier, especially if you’re in a small rural environment with no social network or other services available. Events showing support for their plight – and sometimes making other students think about what’s right and wrong and then show their support, even if they aren’t gay – help promote understanding.

As might be anticipated, the event isn’t without controversy. The religious right attempts to make much of the event that it isn’t, threatening to remove their children from schools in protest and to otherwise express their disapproval. 
Such is their right. 

But you have to wonder how organizations that purport to express love and compassion and a betterment of society reconcile that with the attempts to allow the bullying and intimidation to continue. Indeed, it’s often interesting that some of the vilest and most abusive participants in the bullying are those who are those most frequently in church.

I support the program strongly. If it makes school a bit less miserable for just one child, it’s worth it.

More information is available at the following sites:

http://www.edgenewengland.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=104564

http://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/four-things-you-should-know-about-student-rights-and-day-silence

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Ninja Thieves

One of the lead stories in the paper today is that someone broke into a woman’s apartment, stole her 7 goldfish, the fish food, the filter and a little tool box and then left. The police have no leads on suspects.

I’m glad that these target crimes are finally getting the attention they deserve. I, myself, have been subject to a virtual crime spree of this type for years, usually when I’m working around the house somewhere.

The thieves are remarkably crafty, too. You can be working along at something, tools in your hands, and if you’re distracted for even a moment – poof – your pliers or knife or whatever disappears.

Even the lawnmower has been known to wander to the other side of the house, although the burglars apparently got scared and dropped their loot, because there it was in the shade when I found it a few minutes later.

It’s annoying because after something is taken you spend an inordinate amount of time looking around for the stolen items so that you can continue your project.

Sometimes, you just have to accept the loss and just go buy another one. In fact, that’s often my default position.

Dad always taught us that every home project is the opportunity to acquire new tools.

Especially when the old ones keep wandering off.

The interesting thing to me is that these bandits don’t necessarily stop at tools.

Someone swooped in and swiped a cup of onion out of my kitchen a few days ago, WHILE I WAS IN THERE COOKING.

Considering the squeaks in our ancient hardwood floors and the fact that the whole house knows if someone has to go to the bathroom at 3 a.m., I figure these guys must be masked ninjas, at the very least. Nobody else could be that light on their feet.

20 minutes after the thieves got my onions, I had no choice other than to just concede the loss and chop some more.

It’s not worth the paperwork to report it to the police, either. Those crimes never get the attention they deserve, which is unfortunate because the stolen items often reappear close by. Just a little bit of CSI would go a long ways toward improving constituent satisfaction in our public servants.

In my own case, the onions were snuck back into the living room, right there on top of the piano. I found them two days later when I went to check the mail. A good cop coulda popped right on that, though, and I’da been one happy citizen.

Instead, the living room smells funny and I’m still cussin’ the crooks in our neighborhood and the well-guarded donut shop up the street.

The workings of the criminal mind simply escape me. I have no idea why anyone would steal a cup of chopped onions and then decide to return them to another room in the same house. Even if they left with them, one would think that the street value of chopped onions is hardly worth all that effort.

Maybe that's why they abandoned them.

I hope the lady in the paper finds her goldfish. The paper points out that the tank was not taken, and let’s face it – goldfish aren’t like puppies, they don’t ride well in a backpack or purse. They’re also not likely to wander home on their own.

I’m glad to see that the police are taking the crime seriously, though, and hope that they’ll dedicate some of their budget to unexplained onion and crescent wrench disappearances.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Bibliophile Spring Cleaning

We’re on a cleaning jag at the house. It’s beyond the normal "throw out the clothes that no longer fit – kill the dust bunnies" cleaning, but more that deep kind of clean that makes you reflect on your soul and inner worth.

It’s the kind of cleaning that acknowledges that 34 waist jeans are a thing of the past, and they will never be important to us again.  They can go to Goodwill without reservation.

It's the kind of cleaning that recognizes that we really don’t need to keep both the photographs and the negatives of the pictures snapped when one of us worked the Lion’s Club Chicken Dinner Day in the 8th Grade, especially since we can’t identify 99.9% of the people in the pictures.  Some things should have been shredded long ago and memories of those haircuts should be obliterated through hypnosis if necessary.

It's the kind of cleaning that realizes that we will never, ever, be able to finish all the craft projects for which we have materials, even if we worked on them every night for the next 100 years.

Especially those that are in boxes that moved from another state and have yet to be opened and inspected.

One of the things this makes very obvious is, like the craft projects, we couldn’t read all the books in the house if we took vows of silence, disconnected the internet and cable and never mowed the yard again, devoting ourselves to sequentially emptying the boxes and bookshelves while doing nothing but reading for the rest of our natural lives.

That's one of the places that we decided to start in earnest, and the result is that we now have a variety of boxes sitting around in most every room with books going into them.

The first thought was to sell them. After all, we know what we paid for them.

One of the sad realities with regard to books, especially textbooks, is that they depreciate faster than cottage cheese left on the kitchen counter in July. Despite the fact that some of those books that cost upwards of $100 in the early 80’s, they’re probably not worth a quarter at a garage sale now.

The problem with previously-read books, though, is that you keep remembering why you liked it and kept that book.  One of those was a book that a friend gave me when I opened my first office. Published in 1910, it was a manual on how to operate your law office.

Some things have changed, obviously, but some are worth revisiting for consideration again.

For example, there’s a whole chapter devoted to a discussion of whether or not you should have a telephone installed in your office.

Early in the chapter, the author rules the thought of actually having a phone on your desk as somewhat ludicrous. After all, nobody is going to go to the extravagance of actually having TWO telephones in the same suite of offices or home.  He opines that it needs to be on your secretary’s desk so she can answer it, and besides, there's really very little reason for anyone other than the secretary to use the telephone. If there’s truly anyone that the attorney needs to talk with who can’t come into the office, the boss can step out to the front office for a moment and take that call.

Think about that one.  How'd you like to have to trot out to the front office to take every phone call during the day?
The discussion talks about the fact that a telephone is really unnecessary since you can rely on the postal service’s twice a day delivery or couriers bringing notes to you from other offices.

I couldn't make stuff like this up. I'm not that smart.
After debating both sides of the telephone topic for several pages, the author ultimately determines that a telephone is unnecessary anywhere in the office. It interrupts your thought processes since there’s no telling when it will go off and rattle your nerves, it’s difficult to figure out how to bill with the jumble of things going on, it interrupts time better spent reading the law and interferes with the personal relationship with your client.

He is in favor of typewriters, though, since it makes your documents look neater. 

Of course, it's obvious that the writer was brilliant in his insight.  Unfortunately, like some of the best ideas of mankind, this one will be discarded, relegated to the box with all the other books full of knowledge that is no longer relevant or useful or practical. The value of most of the suggestions in that particular book are of little relevance in today's reality. It’s fun to dream of a world without telephones, though.

Now you see why it takes so long to sort through the books in the house.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Facebook v. Mom

Facebook has once again created problems for another adult who is behaving somewhat like a child.

You might remember the Wake Forest School teacher who posted some rather unflattering remarks about her students a few weeks ago.

http://cornerat8th.blogspot.com/2010/02/on-facebook-and-teachers.html.

The media today reports that she’s been removed from direct teaching within the school system and is now a coordinator in the central office. That’s probably for the best, given the poor judgment she exercised.

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2010/apr/08/wake-county-teacher-out-classroom-after-facebook-p/news-ncpolitics/

In this case, though, it’s the mother of a 16 year old Little Rock, Arkansas boy who disapproved of some of the things he was posting on his Facebook page.

For example, the fact that he drove home at 95 mph one night because he was mad at a girl. There were apparently other things that his Mom didn’t care to talk about with the media, which is not unexpected when you consider how events unfold in the situation.

It seems that Junior, who has lived with his Grandmother for the last five years, was using his mom’s computer and left his Facebook account logged on. Upon discovering this, Mom put up a few posts of her own and then changed his password so that he couldn’t take them down.

There was apparently some online conversation between Mom and Junior’s friends after that, although details aren’t provided.

Junior, of course, reacted as most 16 year olds would. He was absolutely outraged that his mother – his MOM – of all people, would try to control and direct his life with regard to some apparently poor decisions that he was making.

Who does she think she is, anyhow, his PARENT or something?

So he filed a criminal complaint with the District Attorney, alleging in his handwritten pleading that, “She posted things that involve slander and personal facts about my life.”

Hardly legal phrasing that matches the prose of Oliver Wendell Holms, but apparently sufficient to get the attention of an Assistant District Attorney, who has filed a misdemeanor criminal case for harassment against her.

There’s a fine example of our public resources at work. Prosecutor’s offices are frequently overwhelmed by the volume of cases with which they must deal – rape, murder, assault, white collar crime – and this Assistant DA has decided to pursue a mom for “harassing” her son on Facebook because the child has asked him to do so.

The kid does get points for originality and follow through. Filing a criminal complaint against your mom for what most of us would consider a routine disciplinary action – say, something short of premeditated murder -- is definitely outside the box.

Had I done that, physical abuse would undoubtedly have been involved. People would have talked about the novelty of the approach during the eulogy at the funeral, too.

The problem, of course, goes back to the failure to draw distinct lines between who is the parent and who is the child. My computer, my rules. It’s a time honored variation of the historic dispute between parents and children – i.e. “My house, my rules.”

And make no mistake, as between all adults and children, all computers in the house belong to the adults regardless of any perceived title or ownership issues because while the kid may have obtained the computer from some other source (say, Grandma, for example) it’s fairly probable that the adult pays for the internet access.

My DSL access, my rules.

When Junior first got old enough to begin wanting to play on the computer, there should have been an understanding reached – in our house, it’s in the form of a written agreement about computer use – any parent can see what you’re doing at any time; attempts to hide something results in a loss of privileges; the child has only so much privacy as is warranted in the parents supreme discretion, and passwords, which must be provided prior to opening an account, cannot be changed without prior parental permission (recognizing that siblings are inclined to sneak around for secret information at times).

That train left the station long ago for this mom and son, though, and there are obviously bigger issues at play here. Mom – who seems clueless but not criminal – could have locked the page down with the simple message posted regarding the fact that Junior has lost his computer privileges and will not be online for a few days.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and think that she was trying to use a teachable moment not only for her son, but for his friends. The fact that she posted TMI – too much information – probably negates that, though.

I suspect that she saw a way to get even with the little snot and took her shot.  By posting comments that are sufficient to support even the weakest case in criminal court, she’s hurt her parental position by shifting the focus of the discussion from that of discipline of a teenager to the actions of a parent "harassing" that same child.

It would seem that removing his driving privileges would go a lot further toward protecting him from his own stupidity while keeping the source of her information available.

There’s a chance for everyone involved here to learn from the experience, so maybe it won’t be a complete loss.

As observers, we can see that social networking pages provide a great deal of insight into what others are doing. Disputes and actions that would previously have been private are elevated to the level that they can be used against those generating them for a variety of purposes. Parents regularly lose custody or visitation privileges with their children when unwise photographs or comments are posted, printed out, and entered into evidence.  Employees are learning that their coworkers, bosses and company execs look online to see what they're saying about them, and then react accordingly.

Mom has learned that discipline needs to be direct, related to the activity and, with relatively few exceptions, done in private. Teaching the boy a lesson is very different than humiliating him in a public forum which is usually (but not always) unnecessary. One would hope that she's begun to recognize that her child seems to be out of control, but then, she may have recognized that earlier.

She may also learn that while “stupid” is not necessarily criminal, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to go to the expense and trouble of defending your actions against a criminal complaint.

Junior has learned that when you put information out on the internet, it’s there for God and everyone – including your mom, your employer or your ex-spouse – to read. He’s probably also learned to be doubly sure that he’s logged off the computer before leaving the keyboard.

I hate to think what else he’s learned at such a young age.

Hopefully the government's attorney has learned about prosecutorial discretion, where those in his position are required to apply some level of common sense in deciding how to expend the public’s resources. His boss may need to explain how elections are sometimes lost over unwise decisions by subordinates, and most adults are not going to cotton to having their public officials drawn into what is likely viewed as a minor disciplinary matter between a parent and child.  Especially when it's something that they might have done if faced with similar circumstances.

Most taxpayers – a category into which the majority of 16 year olds do not fall – would not approve of this particular course of action which may start a trend among budding delinquents seeking retribution.  There are other, bigger problems about which society needs to be concerned right now.

Instead, the adults need to be “dope slapped” upside the head and Junior needs to be reigned in before he really hurts someone or ends up in jail.

My bet is that it’s already too late for that, though, and Junior will have the chance to be in the news again in the future. He’ll be one of those prisoners who continually files handwritten pleadings in Federal Court complaining about the quality of food or insufficient air conditioning at his particular penal institution.

You have to wonder if is momma is going to come see him on visiting days after this.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FAMILY_FACEBOOK_FLAP?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Springtime in the Carolinas

There’s a dark side to springtime in the Carolinas.
Amidst the explosion of color when things start to bloom – and they all seem to happen at once – you notice something that doesn’t happen in Oklahoma.

The air is thick. I don’t mean that heaviness that happens before a thunderstorm on the plains when you can taste the ozone. I mean that it’s thick, to the point that you feel like a catfish in a muddy river. You can feel the stuff you’re breathing. At times, there’s enough haze that it looks like fog with little snowflakes intermingled.

Unfortunately, you also feel the crud in the air both on the intake and the outgo, since sneezing and coughing seems to worse than during the cold and flu season we just finished.

I’m talking about the pollen explosion, of course. After more than a decade in the Carolinas I’m still not used to it.

It happens all at once, so there’s not a lot of time to get ready. Not that you could do much anyhow.

One day, you notice that the daffodils are all out with their yellow heads bobbing in the breeze. That’s usually the indicator that it’s about to happen.

Then the flowering trees pop, visual warning signs that the unseen invaders are here as well. The worst ones are the trees that don’t have the bright, ornamental flowers but instead spew out these greenish worm looking things that apparently carry more pack for the punch.

It’s then that you see your car is covered with this yellow “ick” that sticks to everything it touches.

Don’t believe me? Brush against a car in a black suit. You’ll be going back to change.

Speaking of cars, they’re all the same color right now. Kind of a grayish yellow, with the original tone peaking through like primer on a bad paint job. If there’s no rain (like it’s been here for the last week or so, since things really opened up) the car washes tend to do a pretty good business just because some people can’t take it any more and have to get the stuff off the car.

Others of us, used to dusty vehicles, simply refill the windshield washer fluid. Scraping your windows of pollen is about as common as scraping the frost off was a few weeks ago.

Eventually, your car’s windshield washer won’t be able to manage the accumulation and you have to use that squeegee thing at the filling station to take off the gunk that cakes up.

The other thing you learn quickly is not to succumb to the urge to open the windows in the house, no matter how nice the day is outside. If you do, you are instantly inundated with all that stuff inside your carefully filtered environment and taking everything down to dust will make you truly appreciate the aspects of air conditioning other than just cooling the living room.

Over the years I’ve learned to adapt. It’s necessary, because there are things in the air in the Carolinas that my Oklahoma sensitivities had never encountered before and still aren’t happy about.

Paying someone to mow the lawn is cheaper than the drugs that will be necessary after I do it myself, and without the side effects of being a balloon-head for days on end.

Mom’s rule about “no air conditioning before May 1” is completely out There are days in March that may have the heat on in the morning and the air conditioning on in the afternoon.

Carry your suit jacket with you until you arrive at your destination, then put it on. Those little pads of cloths to pickup lint are also helpful, although it may take 3 or 4 if you have to park at the far end of the lot.

Give in and take drugs. It’s one of the few times that moving to an altered state really will make your problems go away and things get better.

The pollen is a pain, but then again, as you look out from your atmospherically controlled environment, springtime really is beautiful.

Here’s a few shots from our yard this year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45676962@N05/tags/springyard/show/

Friday, April 2, 2010

Coco the Colossal Colon

One of the big Charlotte Hospitals announced that “Coco the Colossal Colon” will be visiting their facility this week. Coco is a 40 foot long, 4 foot tall replica of a human colon. Visitors are encouraged to climb through the tube to learn about diverticulitis, hemorrhoids and polyps, among other things associated with colon health.

Coco’s official web page (http://www.colonclub.com/colossalcolon.html) invites you to, “Join the Colon Club."

I don't even want to think about the perks that might be offered if you earn enough points there.

It points out that Coco has a busy schedule, having toured more than 100 cities in 40 states and Canada since 2002, and for a fee is available to do local talk shows or birthday parties. Her performance schedule is listed as well -- aside from the health care facilities that you might normally expect, there's a guest appearance at Wal Mart.

Stop and think on that one for a bit. There's a lot of people coming through, many of whom ought to be thinking about their colons -- just look at their shopping baskets. I bet that Action 9 News would come out and do a bit as well, opening the possibility that Coco could do local talk shows, not to mention other private events.

"Daddy, I wanted Spiderman to come to my birthday party."

"I know, son, but we couldn't book Spiderman. He was busy fighting bad guys. We got Coco the Colossal Colon instead, though, when we were down at the Wal Mart getting your cake. It ought to be here any minute."

"Will it climb the walls to the ceiling, or shoot a silly string web out to catch us?"

"Well, no. I think it might teach you a trick with a lighter, though, that you'll find handy when you go to college. Just make sure you don't have skid marks on your underwear in case you get picked to be the assistant."

Don't overlook other civic events, like the Lion's Club Pancake Breakfast. It's not exactly Disney where you'd plunk down $28 a head to eat with Goofy or Mickey, but maybe it's worth an extra fiver for interaction with a different kind of character.

“Lemme show you the tricks I can do. Any of you guys got a lighter? I'm gonna need a volunteer to help with this. Which of you old guys had brocolli for dinner last night? Let’s talk about what’s going to happen to those waffles after you leave the dining room.”

OK, I’m stretching it a little. They don’t really do birthday parties or character breakfasts. Besides, I think the target audience is just a little older – which kind of raises the question of whether the ability to crawl through Coco is really the most effective way for them to get out their message.

Who thought up the idea that most people who are in the demographics to be really concerned about colon health are going to crawl through a 40 foot long mock-up of a colon?

I can’t imagine much of anything short of a runaway child that would get me on my hands and knees to do that, just out of fear that the video that would end up on U-Tube. You know that would be what someone brings up at your funeral years down the road, or during your next re-election campaign.

Without a doubt, colon health is an important topic of discussion. The closer I get to the magical 5-0 and that first inevitable screening, the more personal concern it causes me. Despite the serious nature of the issue, though, it’s just too easy of a target to ignore.

Of course, it also opens the possibility for the knockoffs to go to a secondary market.

I wonder if “Timmy the Tapeworm” has been copyrighted yet.