Month: July 2015

I’m going to rant for a second here about the decline of critical thinking. It all started with a student who asked me to share why we needed to make webpages for our online class. It was unclear what the correlation between making webpages and mythology is. I get the confusion. Some of that confusion is born out of how we classify the act of making a webpage (and what kind of people need to have that knowledge) and what we believe online learning (even learning in general) is supposed to look like.

On one level a webpage is merely another form of media. Asking you to share knowledge in the form of a webpage is no different than asking you to share knowledge in the form of an essay, save for the fact that we are used to writing essays. Sharing information about mythology through a webpage is really no different than if you do it in an essay save for the fact that the webpage allows for a greater sense of creativity and character. Consider it the ‘class presentation’ medium of the online environment.

Often students struggle with the idea of doing something that is different or doesn’t make sense in terms of what they’ve always done. My own assumptions play into this as well. I assumed that anyone taking a 200 level online class would have a fair degree of net savvy. Not true. Multiple students weren’t aware of how to make a webpage and at least one expected step by step instructions on how to do so. Here’s the thing I really hate about that: People want to compartmentalize knowledge or see learning in a vacuum. They don’t want to recognize that often you need to draw skills from other areas and learn different processes and apply them to your task.

Such is the college life.

 

The saying, ‘those who read often, write well’ is often written off as an exaggeration without any careful consideration paid to how such a thing might work. I used to think it was about imitation. If you read a lot you start to develop an understanding of the rhythms and language of successful writing. This is still true, but it isn’t the whole story.

For me, creative writing is often a reaction to something I’ve been through, drawing on the experience and also on the many many stories I have read over the years. Tonight I sat down on the living room floor only to find a bug crawling on my arm. I killed it and moments later came up with this line: Douglas didn’t want to think about the bug clinging to the hem of Sara’s skirt, but he could think of nothing else. The line draws on my experience and a handful of stories I’ve read discussing the often awkward interactions between men and women. In the proposed scenario Douglas is eventually caught staring, which leads to an awkward moment about what she thought he was doing, and finally winds back to the bug itself.

My scenario is a simple one that could have come wholly from creative interpretation of the one experience,  but I find more and more that most of the writing I do is influenced by the reading I do. Thus as I read more fiction of all quality levels, I get a stronger sense of my voice, where I fit in the spectrum, and what I like to write. Conversely, without books to fuel me, my creative tank runs dry and I struggle for even the basic blog.

I was looking at Sarah Selecky’s writing blog and thinking about her ideas about how people want to love when I decided to write about what that looks like. Understanding love is hard for me, because it comes in so many different varieties that it is truly difficult to pin down what it means to love.

There is a natural distinction between romantic and plutonic love, but even that becomes blurred over time. We define that distinction by the question, do you want to be intimate with that person, but the question feels false. What does intimate mean. I am intimate with my closest male friend in the sense that I share secrets and feelings with him that I wouldn’t share with hardly any other human on the planet. That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with him. So then there is the question of sex. Does intimacy mean sex or wanting to have sex with someone? I’d be quite fine developing a sexual relationship with Kate Beckinsale or Rhona Mitri but I don’t know them and don’t feel any particular connection with them short of the physical attraction (which I am aware is largely manufactured by television). Therefore, that is an incomplete diagnosis of love. In fact, the question of sex itself largely ignores the why. I’ve been part of conversations with women who speak of sex with their partners that is something driven by an emotional connection to them but not a physical one in any sense of the word.

Maybe love looks like giving of yourself to another human being selflessly. It is simple to get bogged down in the specifics of gender, sexuality, and attraction and ignore the basic currency of love, which is to give. Another part of that currency is to strive to understand, and so love must look like caring and respect and understanding. It must feel like a soft touch on the shoulder, a squeeze of the hand, even an unexpected hug.

I fear our lack of understanding of love is a huge part of why it is so often impermanent; why it all too quickly falls into disappointment, distrust, and despair. As one who has loved, lost, hurt, and healed I think I have at least a basic understanding of how I love. I don’t begin to suggest that I understand how to always see it in others.

 

As my first born moves into the more serious stages of athletics, I’m really starting to think about his psyche and his willingness to endure what sports offer. A recent CNN (yes, I do still stop by to peruse top stories, even if the organization is for shit) article reminded us of the ever-present culture of bullying in sports. My boys and I watched an outside the lines report about a coach who yelled and kicked and threw things at players. They were convinced the guy was a terrible coach, to which I responded, ‘he’s a typical coach.’ Anger has played such a large role in the coaching I’ve seen over the years that it feels ubiquitous to every sport. In fact, i’ve come to expect it and as a result want to know that my kid is ready.

The coaches my kid have don’t scream. He has one of the best tackle football coaches I’ve encountered up close in terms of motivation and management. The youth coaches he’s dealt with were largely nice or me. Imagine the shock he’ll feel walking into a locker room where a coach builds team unity by becoming the common enemy.

The real question is, why is bullying so endemic to sports? I think they may be one in the same. Te whole idea of sport is to establish physical and psychological dominance over another being. The whole idea of bullying is the same thing. Sports however are a far better way to exorcize this particular human proclivity.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Sometimes I throw out allegations and they take a long time to start panning out or don’t pan out at all. Finding out that the gun used in the recently politicized killing belonged to a government agent only adds to the lure of the thing.

Once upon a time De’Andre Johnson was on top of the world; the future of the Florida State Seminoles. In a span of a few days he was suspended from the team and then, in an unrelated incident, wound up as the new poster boy for male aggression. Here’s what went down:

Johnson was trying to get to the bar to get a drink and pushed past a girl in order to get to the empty spot next to her. This is all documented on video, so the level of alcohol involved is not fully clear. We know she was drinking something. We know he was at least attempting to get a drink. As he tried to get past the female, she became upset and shoved him with her shoulder. He pushes back with his body weight without even directly acknowledging her. She says something to him and raises her fist and starts saying something to him in an aggressive manor. He grabs her fist and pulls it down to her waist, clearly trying to keep it away from him. She quickly responds with a knee to the midsection. She follows quickly with a wild punch at his face with her free hand. He dodges and connects with a right hook. He disappears from the camera angle at that point.

Based on this evidence (see the video for yourself), Johnson was charged with misdemeanor battery. So far the authorities have declined to press charges against her, deciding that she did not attack him in any fashion. To hear it from the internet, she she be excused because she was obviously drunk, so he didn’t need to do that. I ask, if it were a man, would ‘obviously drunk’ be an acceptable excuse then?

The whole point I’m trying to make here is that there remains a very uneven set of expectations when it comes to physical retaliation. Perhaps it is the karmic balance for the devastatingly unfair way we deal with rape as a species. I think it all points to a faulty system of understanding when it comes to gender. These ideas, often wrapped in religion and history, hold us back be perpetuating falsehoods. Women are told to train to defend themselves. Often women are presented with free lethal response training as a way to prevent them from being victims. While an effective way to learn self-defense on the cheap, this only perpetuates the idea that women are victims.

This woman in the video was not a victim. She felt this man bump her and reacted the way a stereotypical drunk person (read: male) is expected to. She grew belligerent and violent. Only she wasn’t a dude, so the guy who hit back winds up on $500 bond. Such is life. Too bad Deandre Johnson’s life is officially over. With this following him around, the 18+ years of football that led him to this point aren’t going to take him anywhere into the future.

With one swing, it is time to start over. Maybe he can take up a career in boxing.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Though the police aren’t saying so right now, the attack on Kathryn Steinle seems anything but random. The killer’s excuse is clearly bogus. He claims he found a gun wrapped in a shirt, picked it up, and it just started firing. That is obviously a lie, but why would he be carrying a concealed weapon and open up on her like that? Questions ought to be asked.
2. Since we are on the subject, I gotta say this story wouldn’t get the publicity it did if she wasn’t beautiful and there wasn’t so much footage available. Sad, but true. Obviously the political angle carries weight, but she is being billed as a beautiful, innocent, American woman murdered by a Mexican felon. For that narrative alone people aren’t asking the important questions.

2 AM is certainly not the best time to be blogging, but when you’re hoped up on caffeine and bad comedy the optics certainly feel right. I’ve been swirling around the base level of human intelligence as of late, moving in and out of bad TV series while munching on potato chips and hoping to find bottom. I believed, for a while now, that the only way up was to hit bottom. Call it an AA thing. I spent time as a rehab counselor and even helped out with addict meetings of various flavors. One of the things we taught was that people only get right when they are ready to get right and they aren’t usually ready to get right until they hit bottom. Here’s the problem with applying that philosophy to intellectual I/O: there is no bottom. The truth is the media engine is designed specifically to keep you hooked in and swirling around the bottom of the intellectual pool trapped and never able to find the bottom, let alone the surface. I suppose I’ve known this all along. It wouldn’t surprise me if sometime in the last 1887 days I’d written something about it.

If you track those days you’ll find evidence of the swirl. The highs are there and the lows and the efforts to break the cycle and be something new and better. Evidence of the barriers–of what holds me back–is present as well. I know now that it just comes down to deciding that you need to do something different and you need to make your place and your value in things. It isn’t so much about finding a tipping point as it is about forcing it.

That dull ever present headache is nature’s way of reminding me that my brain is rotting. I need to turn it back on and get the gears spun up for good.

This ain’t a film review nor is it a moment of praise for Trey Parker and Matt Stone (though they deserve it). This is a sad reflection on the fact that Team America: World Police has become a legit reflection of how things actually are in America right now. The problem? The people who are propagating the media and, in that sense, creating the message that so much of our country is said to believe. The film was dismissed out of hand almost immediately. The pair, responsible for South Park, paint clear images of life in our nation from a metaphorical and philosophical perspective.

 

Parker and Stone were interviewed back in 2004 and said a lot of things that resonate 11 years later. Among the quotes are, “Kids have to be taunt to be good people… Kids are naturally born self-centered and have to be taught by society to respect society.” So, who is teaching our society? Right now we are being educated in a way that reinforces either one narrative or the other. The divide is often painted as liberal or conservative, but the division is far more distinct than that. To me it comes down to two types of America. There’s the America that exists in the Carl’s Jr. commercials–one that seems to come from the pages of the Team America script–a black and white America who sees us all as standing together against a great evil. In short, the Fox News America that is so threatened by Obama supposedly eroding our strength. Then there is the other America, the one that is in on the joke. I feel like I’m part of that second America. I’m part of Jon Stewart’s America. I’m part of the America that sees nuance and recognizes that there are many forces and beliefs at play.

So here on the 4th of July I want to take a moment to reflect on our independence from a controlling entity by reminding myself and anyone who will listen that we don’t need to be controlled by this ever-present WWII ideal of America being the military superpower who is responsible for policing the world. Those are small-minded goals. We ought to be an America that looks to the future and thinks about understanding why we exist at all; an America that is a haven for ideas and attitudes and a place that supports freedom.

I allowed myself two hours of alone time today before the big sleepover (3+2 more kids = damn!) and spent the time with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson–at least on screen. I watched San Andreas and boy was it a good time. Though imperfect, the film had all the qualities of an action-first summer blockbuster with enough resonant story that the characters seem worth following.

The key points of a summer blockbuster tend to be action and name recognition driven. This has the Rock and Carla Gugino, but it also has appearances from a slew of known secondary actors. Paul Giamatti even plays a major role. It feels like they crammed every actor they knew into the film just to say, ‘earthquake!’

The storyline is simplistic: Dad loses wife and daughter, wife and daughter need him at a crucial time. Dad is there fir them. However, the narrative is really focused on the beautiful people and cinematography more than any deeper connections between characters. (Did I mention they cast Kylie Minogue in what could’ve been a memorable role but turned throwaway quickly)

Overall, I was looking for characters to get behind and great scenery on which to do so. This film had all of it.

 

I mentioned the other day that I was having a particularly tough time with this basketball season. That has not changed. The older team is dealing with a really rough transition to 10-12 ball. This happened in flag football as well. Basically, my 10 year olds are experiencing 10-12 for the first time, despite the fact that many of them are going to be 11 before year’s end. They are still raw and emotional. Two games in a row have been decided in the last seconds and both were losses. All games have been losses, much like flag football turned out (we did get the 1 win). 6-7 continues to be a different story, with all but one of our five games resulting in a win–usually a big one. Tonight was no different, a 27-4 thumping of a very good team with a coach I really like and respect. This isn’t a blog about winning though. This is about the moment a mom walked on the court and put everything in a dark and difficult perspective.

The mom in question is the same mom that wants her kid to feel like a superstar. On the surface there is nothing wrong with a kid feeling confident. Still, she bragged about him always being the best on a very bad team and was disappointed in the skill level of our team because her son didn’t stand out. I have a very different take on the boy. To me he’s a kid who is good enough to play with good kids and contribute. Being around better players will make him stronger as a player and give him a bit of a backbone and sense of reality. Regardless of the age group it is ridiculous to me to try to shelter a kid from the reality of their skill level and opposing competition. We aren’t going to put our worst kid on their superstar and say, “guard that kid” but at the same time we aren’t going to sit him until an appropriately sucky set of players takes the court so he can show out.

That is precisely what this mom demanded that I do.

She walked on the court and into the huddle as we are sending players out and said in front of his peers that he needed to be with the weaker players because he was getting discouraged. He looked at me half like she was crazy and half mortified. Not wanting her to make more of a scene, I benched him and let him come out with the subs. He did well–just as well as he had with the starters (of which he is one BTW) and when all of the bench kids came out of the game he asked to stay on and play with the “good kids”.

Clearly the mom was hovering around her kid trying to control his experience and make it the best possible experience for him. I respect that, but I don’t respect the way she did it or her inability to recognize that the kid wants and needs to grow. I can only suspect she’ll continue to do this and can only imagine that once he hits a level where the competition is much more intense (8-9 is that way) he will shrivel up and quit because of both how he was treated by her and equally not being exposed to a significant level of talent.

Sure, some players do get down when our top kids are on the court and everybody is asking for the ball, but that is all part of the learning process. You aren’t always going to be the MVP, but you are always going to have a chance to contribute to the best of your ability. That contribution is worth something, whether you are the star or the 12th man on the bench. No matter where you rank you are still part of the team and hiding from your natural role to try and pretend to be something you are not doesn’t boost confidence, it creates false bravado.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1884 was the year the United States adopted standard time. We didn’t do so because of any social convenience. It wasn’t about a unity pledge across the USA. No, our country adopted standard time in order to set proper schedules for the railroad. So you see, we’ve always been about business first and will remain that way ad infinitum.

One would think there isn’t a tremendous amount of football to be talked this deep into the offseason. One would be wrong. No less than two networks spend significant time talking up football. One speaks on the game 24 hrs a day. There are a few things to talk about. We can get into the prime time receivers showing that they are super athletes all around. As Gary is my witness, we’ve seen Odell Beckham Jr. do just about everything but practice as a receiver this year. According to my boys, he’s the “whip” guy. Yes, we watched him nae nae.

The beauty of the offseason (for most) is the belief that your team has a legit shot in the upcoming season. This is true of all sports–unless you are a NY fan and your team incorporates any sort of orange into their jersey. In that case you’re screwed Cubs style. In that case you name your youth teams after your home team just to see someone with that team name bust out a winning season.

I’m drifting off track. It must be the fatigue. Short post. It turns out there really isn’t a whole lot to say about football in the off season.