Author: admin

I want to start by quoting something I read on NPR: “A judge held an unusual hearing in New Jersey on Tuesday: a lawsuit brought by an 18-year-old who says her parents kicked her out of their house. Rachel Canning is seeking to force her parents to give her financial support and money for college, in addition to pay for tuition at her private school.”

This can only happen in the USA. See, I almost said America there, but then I would be a hypocrite and a victim of my own entitlement. America–The Americas–consist of a lot more than our 50 some odd states. Because I myself am entitled, I generally feel okay calling our chunk of the Americas the only America. I, like most of us, tend not to consider Mexico and Canada as part of the Americas, and tend to ignore South America on most days unless I am thinking about vacations or really good soccer.

The point is we are living in a dangerously entitled society. Once kids start to believe they can sue parents for college money we need to go back to the part where when they didn’t do their chores we locked in a dark room and slid bread under the door. There is a reason my kids don’t watch commercials. I can’t lie–there was at least a year where I sat my kid down in front of a TV and called it good. I mastered the 30 second skip forward feature and danced past all of those silly commercials. They’ve started to believe they have an inherent right to television, and from that television and from the things they have they believe they have a right to privileges in general. I don’t think I’m going to be sued if I opt out of paying for college or put them out on the street, but they are far from understanding what it means to live in a shanty town.

My wife and I came from humble means. She is a refugee and I lived in Harlem when there were still black people there. Because of the way we were raised I’m driven to give my kids more than I had. This in no way means they are entitled to those things, but I understand that giving things to my kids can lead to that impression. It is something important to recognize as a parent.

Some Thoughts:

1. That soccer comment got me thinking about the upcoming youth soccer season. I’m pretty excited. No expectations except a lot of kids running really hard to to the ball

 

Its about the story arc.

I had occasion to tell a friend about my obsession with How I met Your Mother. I started on the show years ago, solely as an opportunity to enjoy Neil Patrick Harris being Legend—wait for it—Dary. I didn’t explain much of my obsession past the fact that I really do enjoy NPH. Tonight’s episode reminded me why I started watching to begin with.

How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) is a 30 minute sitcom about a man who is desperately searching for happiness and companionship in New York City. It takes the group dynamics of ‘Friends’ and ups the level of humor and acting, and stuffs them into a bar to hang out, tell stories, and experience life. The central story premise is that the lead character, Ted Mosby, is in a room somewhere in the future talking to his two teenage kids about how he met their mother. Every episode is Ted telling a story about his life and his friends to his children. Season by season we see them sitting in this one spot as Ted recounts his life. Even within this frame story there are deeper frame stories. Often within an episode a character will launch into their own frame story and slip further back into history.

Through all this we learn that Ted Mosby is a sad sack of person. He is a hopeless romantic and quite eccentric. It is clear that is perfect woman is going to need to be someone who can identify with him as much as she puts up with him. Here’s the rub: we know he finds her. We know the show must have a happy ending. Or does it?

*********SPOILERS TO FOLLOW*******************

 

 

 

 

 

The fact is, we never even consider why Ted is telling his kids how he met mom. Yet in this one brief moment of honest pain we know everything we need to about the series and its deeper purpose. There is a moment in this newest episode where the mother and Ted are sitting at a table telling stories about a wedding they were both at. At one point Ted’s wife says something along the lines of ‘mothers will always show up at their daughter’s weddings.’ Ted immediately starts crying. Weeping, actually.

She quickly scolds him and changes the subject fast enough for him to forget his tears. However, those few seconds were enough to let the cat out of the bag. Now we know that mom is dying and every memory of her is about what she did for him and for them. This is a brilliant end to a show that everyone expected to end on a happy note. Now we are left to wonder once again how it ends. Will Ted find another love or is he doomed to forever be trapped in the past, content telling stories about what was to his children?

We are obsessed with happy endings in our culture. Not everything is supposed to be happy. I think for once, sitcoms got that part right.

I decided to take an hour to myself in order to get in the right headspace. FAIL. See, I discovered this unusual game called Bejeweled and quickly decided that this is the cause of my soul…

I’m being dramatic, of course, but I was drawn to this game. Spatial awareness is a skill I’ve neglected for some time now and Bejeweled is a low-impact way to work on the ability to see and make visual connections. It is crazy addictive. I played for the better part of 30 minutes and gained the awesome level of ‘Beginner’. Needless to say I have a lot of work to do on the game. I gotta say that I truly enjoy learning–especially when it comes in the form of a game.

Experiences like this serve as distractions from the every day world, but they can also be valuable learning experiences. I’ve redesigned my classes following this principle of fun and distraction. As always, it is about the skills you learn more than it is about the classical classroom experience of ‘Sage on the Stage’. I want the students loud, rowdy, hard working, and driven to be the best in class.

What you see above totally describes the Bejeweled experience. I’m learning something new. I’m being challenged in a way that shows me that I’m making gradual improvement without feeling shamed by the experience–maybe frustrated a bit. Still, its a great way to learn and the way all learning should be — fun and rewarding.

What do you do when the pot runs empty? Every writer has heard of writer’s block. Some believe it exists while others deny it. I’ve become a denier as of late. My denial is part of a deeper understanding of the way my creativity works. It is not endless. It is a subconscious way of rationalizing all of my desires with all of the experiences I have over the course of a day, week, my life. From time to time life itself can become overwhelming and during those times I lose that ability to connect my creative side with the rational understanding of what is happening. I get backed up, and don’t produce new ideas. It isn’t a block in the traditional sense of having nothing to write, but a disconnect between the craziness of the world and the part of my brain that makes sense of all that.

Sometimes there isn’t enough time to let your mind sort things out. You do the day to day routine, living the part of an automaton more than a thinking, feeling being. When this happens it becomes difficult to generate new ideas and to go to that place where your true self exists–that place where the writing comes alive and explodes unto the page.

I could use a vacation…

Some Thoughts:

1. TLC’s obsession with polygamy and dwarfism is getting old. Of course, a show about  little people polygamists might be interesting, but I’m more interested in seeing a little bit of polygyny. What will the media say about a show where a woman has five husbands?

Some of you may remember a time long ago when there was a country called the U.S.S.R. for a time we were the foil for that country, and we sat atop the world as a superpower constantly sharpening our blades in a cold war. This was an incredible time for both media and politics, but the power of both was so concentrated that precious few got fat off the stories. In today’s poli-media mine field there are so many channels and stories and entities looking to cash in that every story is exploded to the point where it is made to seem like the most important story in the world. Likewise, every pundit wants you to hang on their every word, so they say unreasonable things just to get airplay.

Recently Ted Nugent caused a stir because he called our president a mongrel, and was then brought on the campaign trail by a fellow running for office. Nugent is a mouthy prick, but giving him airtime over what was obviously an angry racist blowing off steam is counterproductive and foolish. The same can be said about Al Sharpton or Sarah Palin. These are pundits: individuals who exist to say, ‘I told you so’ and to try to maneuver those in power into making stupid decisions, just to call off the media hounds. Our president is dealing with that in regards to the Crimea situation. All the pundits on the ‘other side of the aisle’ are demanding he play hardball and aren’t considering the fact that hardball leads to war.

The Russians are dealing with the same stuff we are, but it isn’t the media that is pushing them. Instead, the power elite of Russia are looking to sink their teeth into the parts of the U.S.S.R. their parents lost and a few screams from the Americans about the ‘consequences’ only serve to beat the drums of war. I hope to never experience a world war in my lifetime. I don’t think we are remotely near that point, but the media keeps trying to convince me it is a distant possibility.

 

Imagine if everything you learned led to the job you wanted. Imagine now that the job you wanted were no longer available or became obsolete. What would your hard fought education be worth then?

More and more I am seeing commercials for schools like University of Phoenix that advise students to only take courses that lead directly to the job they want. Perhaps I’m from another generation (or even planet), one that believes in a well-rounded education and learning that promotes understanding of what you want to do and what you are capable of as a human being. The system is geared less and less for that sort of person anymore.

The majority of college systems and legislation–especially in the community college sector–are geared towards degree completion in a field that will lead to immediate employment. I’m not troubled by this, but I am troubled by the limited criteria of those tracks. More and more the track system guides us to take only the courses some entity deems absolutely necessary to a specific job line. Wanna be a secretary? There’s a degree for that. Wanna be an HR Specialist? There’s a degree for that too. However, where in all of these degree paths is the idea of becoming a strong learner and critical thinker?

The difficulty I have with track programs is that they train us to do one thing. These programs fail to recognize that society is ever-evolving and that evolution requires critical thinking and a varied skillset. It isn’t about learning the specific set of skills required to do a job so much as it is learning how to be a learner, a team player, and a critical thinker.

Been giving renewed thought to the end of the football season. There is clearly a lot I could have done better and there are lessons I can take from that in order to improve as a coach for the upcoming soccer season. Here are some takeaways:

• More fun
• Focus on having fortitude and courage
• Greater focus on team work
• Greater focus on timing
• Use players to their strengths

The last one is especially important. We lost 2 out of our last 3 because we didn’t–I didn’t have kids who can step up and perform different roles that build off their strengths. We also lost because when the going got tough, we got despondent. I should’ve rethought the starters and began to run more plays with two halfbacks, because I had 2 and I had 1 every down wideout left. I didn’t, because I stubbornly believed all the others would step up and emerge as stars. Becoming a trusted wideout takes time and takes forming a relationship with the QBs. We didn’t have any of that at the end and it showed.

So, in order to improve I need to work on being a better teacher of what is listed above. Teamwork is the starting point. My players didn’t believe they could fill certain roles and I didn’t teach them the timing to be effective in the long run. This is also something I can improve on next year.

A way to build camaraderie is team specific high fives, chants, and other team building rituals. That is something I’ve always been poor at and need to really improve on for soccer. When it comes to soccer we are already going into the season with two underaged  kids, so we are already looking at being an undersized team. We gotta believe and we gotta play smarter than anyone else in the league in order to be successful. With any luck we can pull together some of the players from last year and continue to grow together.

What is lost in this debate over SB 1062 is how far reaching this bill actually is. The bill serves to redefine the individual as a paper corporation and it extends all the protections and freedoms of the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States to non-carbon based lifeforms.

I kid you not.

The material capitalized is marked in blue–indicating amendment or other significant change to the existing 1999 law on the books. “”Exercise of religion” means the PRACTICE OR OBSERVANCE OF RELIGION, INCLUDING THE ability to act or refusal to act in a manner substantially motivated by a religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.”The bill goes on to add, “”Person” includes a religious assembly or institution ANY INDIVIDUAL, ASSOCIATION, PARTNERSHIP, CORPORATION, CHURCH, RELIGIOUS ASSEMBLY OR INSTITUTION OR OTHER BUSINESS ORGANIZATION.”

While the media storm focuses on the idea of this being a Gay Rights bill, the facts as they are laid out above are far more sinister. This is a bill that enhances religious freedom or, in a sense, enables people to impose their religion on others in a significant way. It allows individuals to use their corporations as a tool to advance their ideology. I could, for example, decide to purchase a mall and then decide that allowing persons of a faith not aligned with my own are to be excluded from that mall. I can do that same thing with land, or schools, etc.

Here is the key: anything deemed to be “practice or observation of religion” would be protected–not just for individuals but for companies as well. It does what several other laws as of late have done: It confers humanity on corporations. Yep, here in 2014 we are just a few steps from turning into a full blown Shadowrun society, minus the magic (maybe).

I love that I am free to have any faith I choose, however, I don’t agree that I should be free to segregate others as it serves my faith. In truth, faith should be a deeply personal thing that you impose/embrace yourself as opposed to imposing on others. In a state where the majority of people are part of a highly organized and powerful (and somewhat secretive) religious group, a law that makes any business they control reflective of the religious individual is scary. This particular group had restrictive racial policies until 1978 and still has very restrictive gender policies, as most religions do. So while we are concerned about the sexual rights of some, we should also be concerned about the rights of women who, largely repressed by religion, may quickly discover that businesses now have the right to treat them as the bible sometimes does: Badly.

I’ve had to take a step back and evaluate my life and my responsibilities. Having the flu (or symptoms thereof) leaves one in a vulnerable and reflective state. Been considering different patterns of organization–ways in which to rationalize the workload that doesn’t overwhelm me. I’ve yet to find that magic bullet. I’m still talking about it here…

When I’m not trying to be a better person, I’m thinking about this fundamental difference in my life–the fact that I have kids. I think that having kids is much like growing another limb. Driving past their school today I realized that I am always thinking about them in some ‘background process’ way. My boys are of me and I want to make sure their experiences in life are the best they can possibly encounter.

Another short blog is what I’m encountering now… being sick is hell.

Late at night when the house is quiet is when I miss my cat the most. She’d skulk out of the near darkness and climb into my lap or unto my shoulder in hopes I would settle soon, so she could curl up on me and go back to sleep. I would listen to her purr and my mind would relax to the point I could harvest new ideas. Part of the change–this shift away from coaching–is a recognition of how much has really changed in my late night routine.

Without kitty I’ve begun to fill that uncomfortable silence with the chomp chomp of potato chips. It is grief eating more than stress eating. By any name it is a behavior that is likely to hurt my health.