10 Minute Rule

In academic circles you are not recognized for your physical beauty but for the beauty of your ideas, accomplishments, and struggles. It is with that in mind that NADE chose to honor Temple Grandin as the keynote speaker for this opening day of the 2013 conference. NADE is the National Association of Developmental Educators. Temple Grandin is a Ph.D in Animal Science and pioneered the humane destruction of animals. Her methods have been heralded throughout the planet and adopted by many meat producers. Still, she isn’t really here to talk about meat (though the Pork Board is meeting and she might be seeing them too). She is here because she was diagnosed with Autism at a young age and, despite this then misunderstood affliction, she excelled in academics and earned her Ph.d. She is the goal and the result of a good association of teachers and the reason why many of us continue to fight the battle of developmental Ed against increasingly overwhelming odds.

I watched a kidnapping drama unfold on Castle last night, so before I begin I feel compelled to remind my reader(s) that my heavily armed wife is not home alone, but is being checked in on by my ex military neighbor. Now, I wanted to share a few observations about air travel. To begin, there appear to be two distinct types of travelers: the relaxed veteran and the bring all. I suppose I fall into the latter category, but I mean to be in the former.

There is some crossover between the two, especially in styles of dress. I’ve noticed that women work especially hard at looking good during travel. This may be as a result of the female species being predominantly more relaxed at traveling. They might carry a purse or handbag and be cool. We guys tend to fall into that bring all category, lugging carry-ons, laptop bags, and knapsacks wherever we travel. The act of traveling itself seems to be a binary affair, with the travelers lined up into the categories I laid out partially according to mission. I am weighed down by bags, because I am going to a conference in the near-arctic land of Colorado. During this conference on Developmental Education I plan to scratch out multiple stories and have mad fun. Oh, I’ll learn something too I suppose.

But back to the travel conversation:

You can spot an experienced traveler at check in. You know them as the people who walk right by check in and zoom up to the security gate where there are often a set of express check-in kiosks mostly under-utilzed. They’re the one in the nice but comfortable bottoms and easy slip off shoes. They fly through the gates unnoticed and arrive at the best seats in the plane. You can see why i want to be down with that.

Some Thoughts:
1. My ipad was recently the victim of football violence. While showing my team a play on the ipad, a player decided to hurl a pretty spiral my way. It caught the bottom corner of the ipad and shattered the glass. The kid’s father offered to cover the cost or switch my ipad for the kid’s. I opted for the switch, but lo and behold Walmart may be riding in to the rescue. My insurance is not yet expired and they intend to try to fix the glass. Go Walmart.

2. Jordan kicked up a newstorm by claiming he would try to play basketball at 50. I’m trying to play flag football at 38 and that is a mess. The problem of it is my inability to work out at all. If I could just start with one gym day a week I’d be fine. Now, with the wife poised to take a job that has her working weekend overnights, I may really be in trouble. She’ll be in no shape to watch kids in the morning, causing me to lose the Sunday Football League. That will result in immediate weight gain and deep-seeded disappointment in self. A friend recently suggested I stop worrying about being athletic. Nope. You are asking me to come to terms with the fact that I can no longer live in the world of athletes. I am not ready for that at all.

The last few months have been a whirlwind of writing. I think the universe is finally giving me the level of work I need in order to fight my way to the level of success I want to have as a writer. Now the real work begins. I need to find a way to complete all of the work and do so without jeopardizing my day job. I also need to maintain enough food in the system in order to keep my ideas fresh and relevant.

I’d love to be like Richard Castle and work with a police detective (without the overt sexual tension, of course). I think being around that sort of thing stimulates the senses better than books. At the same time, books remind you of the form and function of fiction in a way that real life cannot.

To be a good writer you have to write. I’m glad to finally be doing so.

I’ve come to see leaders as a breed apart from the people who actually lead. The role of leader is one held by someone who is built to take the flak of social blame. Leadership itself happens in the trenches, sometimes directed by those with charisma or outstanding skill and at other times existing out of necessity when no one else steps up to do the job. The position and the philosophical lead are very different entities. This is true throughout the any levels of employment and social and family structurings. I’ve seen this from both sides of leadership and from the follower’s perspective, and I can say the view from below is often rosier than that from upon high. Each side comes with a set of responsibilities that are sometimes in conflict, but without both, no real work ever gets done.

I remember the first time I ever played roleplaying games. I was 12 at the time and I played with a friend and his older brother. I remember slipping into the guise of a medieval character and trying to earn a living as a swordsman. Even then there was the question of leadership. There were three of us in the party. Us two players and an non-player-character the dungeonmaster, my friends big bro, threw in as a way to keep us from getting killed in-game. If there had only been the pair of us it would have made no difference. When there is more than one then there is going to be a leader. I didn’t want the job–not directly. I wanted my friend to speak and deal with other NPC’s. Still I wanted the ability to direct from behind the scenes, offering helpful suggestions and ensuring our NPC was in the right position to see us all succeed. I was the ‘shadow leader’ or backseat driver. I could suggest and quietly tug at the strings of the lead, but it lacked the gravitas of being out front and taking flak for bad choices. I liked that. I continued to like and live as such through high school whereupon I discovered that sports team structures worked in the same fashion–if only in a more layered way. There was the Coach in charge, the team captain,and me, the guy who kept everyone following the team captain. Only, the role was largely diminished by the fact that the captain did his own thing, taking my suggestions the way a person takes a fly buzzing at his ear. I didn’t like that. I vowed to be an out front leader. Eventually I was.

I’ve talked a lot about how it felt to be the guy out in front of the team, especially in the educational setting. Leadership there is about social engineering. Your job is to build and maintain bridges and make your faculty and your administration look good while offering suggestions they can live with, or re-offering suggestions they already like and then pushing to move those things forward. It is no different in Education than it is in politics, where the leader is often a charismatic figurehead that serves as the front or faceman for the mess that generally lies just below the surface. The leader can make independent moves, but when you do so without 100% consent, it builds animosity and distrust. It is an untenable position that is worth every cent you get for it. Maybe I’ll try my hand at it again, but for now I am content being behind the scenes, trying to help everyone’s agendas align. That’s the kind of leadership I have the mind and patience for these days.

I spent the evening grading a slew of papers and wondering where the disconnect occurred. This is no comment on individuals but on the nature of schooling itself. I think it starts early with students being taught to respond to a select cadre of questions. They fall into these comfortable rhythms of question answer question to the point that if the question changes or is somehow left vague, they are unable to break from the routine and seek creative solutions. In short, we are training robots.

Perhaps robots is too strong. Semi-autonomous knowbots. I don’t know that I am at the point where I understand how to peel back the plastic coating and rework the wiring to prepare them for a future that frankly has nothing to do with what they learned in k-12. That is the job of course, but I am still working at it. When I finally get that magical formula to reconnect students to reality in a truly meaningful way, I am going to bottle it, sell it, and then straight quit the game.

See, job is journey. You work at achieving a goal and once done you move on to another. At least, that’s how I roll.

The flag football season came to an end today. I didn’t get to see the championship game, but we had our own championship game–a rematch between us and the only team to hand us a real beating. We played the Cowboys in a scoring fest that saw us score 48 vs their 38 and take the 4th win of this 7 game season. I would have preferred to go 5 -2 or even 6 -1, but that wasn’t the season we had. I am proud of the the four wins and proud of the way these kids toughed out the season. It took me a while to get it right on offense.

The 4-5 year old team, the Jets, did better this season. We went 6-1 with the loss coming to a team that we slugged it out with, but couldn’t put away. 36-30 was that final score. Not  the same this week as we went up and down the field scoring at will. Now comes the hard part. We need to figure out the MVP for that age and the two MVP’s for the older kids. As much as I want my kids to be recognized as MVPs I know that some other kids played better–at least on offense. I think my 8 yr old has a shot at MVP for the defense. He has at least a dozen more flag pulls than the next closest kid and with his speed he always had the plays going away from him. The 5 yr old should have easily won MVP, but he was sick for two games and lazy for two others. That gave a couple of others the chance to catch him.

March 5th is the team party for both teams. We’ll find out then.

I’ve been watching a lot of Cinemax lately. No, not like that. In fact, I’ve been watching CInemax because the best hard-hitting action series are coming out of the Cinemax camp. Short of Starz’s Spartacus: War of the Damned, there isn’t anything coming out of the other  cable channels that comes close to what Cinemax has managed to put out. First there was the paramilitary drama Strike Back and now they give us Banshee.

Banshee is a delightful mixture of sex and violence; it is a raw journey into classic super-masculinity draped in the guise of a crime drama draped in the guise of a cop show. Every violent moment is punctuated with something tender and meaningful. The characters, feral and engaging, are also heavily layered with history.

Banshee is the story of a talented thief who stole from his boss and wound up in jail. Upon leaving prison he seeks out his partner and lover (who happens to be daughter to his boss and also on the run from her father for the theft). He finds her in a town called Banshee and, before he can get to her, winds up in bar fight where the incoming sheriff dies. The thief, in need of an identity and way to get close to his ex, takes on the identity of the sheriff. Chaos ensues.

It isn’t the sex or violence or any moderation of both but the ferocity of the plot that engages. This show moves fast–modern fast. By season’s end most of the major story points will have been resolved. We are not left to wonder about the big questions. Instead we are left to ask: What happens next.

I think that’s a great formula for an action story.

I thought about calling this post Eye of the Tiger because whenever I think about success I remember that song and the movie that goes with it. He lost the fight in that movie, but the story was really about the fight he went through to get there and go toe to toe with the best. In a real sense I am going toe to toe with some of the best authors in what I am calling the ‘shadowpunk’ genre. Basically, its shadowrun. It is an anthology. It is an opportunity to shine in a place where I don’t for a second have top billing, but have the opportunity to really expand the awareness of what I can do by throwing up some very good stories.

I haven’t had to fight for a whole lot professionally over the last few years and that success makes you lazy. What it takes to be successful is a hunger; a boot on your back trying to shove you into the ground. It also takes a strong core group around you (that or total independence and isolation) telling you that you can do it if you put in the effort and the hours. Becoming successful is a hard thing, but not nearly as difficult as staying there. I am hungry to get the passion and hunger back in my system.

All I gotta do now is sit down and write.

The beauty and difficulty of story writing isn’t placing your character in a terrible situation, but finding that terrible situation to place the character in. Finding that situation is tough, because the situation the character is in needs to be believable and it needs to be so desperate that it triggers the actions of the story while holding the readers attention. I’m looking for one of those right now, and I’m having limited success…

Some Thoughts:

1. Bit nervous for the game this weekend. I wasn’t expecting our team to face the Cowboys again, but when the Broncos backed out of the game (for reasons unknown) we were thrust into a rematch with the Cowboys. We have our full compliment of players now, but all I can see is those ‘boys keying on my running backs and blitzing like wild things. I superimpose that image on top of the last practice where the D did the exact same thing with the exact same results and I feel like there is a lot I need to figure out in a very short amount of time. I don’t know how to stop the rush defense short of an all out passing attack to back them off. Maybe that is what I need to do…

I am now certain that my mood is tied to my productivity–especially in regards to what I find to be the primary goal for that moment. If I’m making headway or at least fighting the good fight then I’m a happy camper. I’m less happy when stalled. Right now I’ve flipped into one of the better moods of the young year. As stated before, I’m back on track with my writing, and though I haven’t found a whole heck of a lot to blog about I am confident that I am putting together everything I need to in order to be successful, and finally doing it in a reasonable time frame.

Some Thoughts:

1. missing one of my best friends something awful. It sucks when people are too busy in their lives to reach outside of the daily circle in order to communicate with loved ones. I’m especially bad at that. 
2. Social Engineering is an awesome term that can be applied to spycraft. I’m enjoying reading about it as well as trying to learn more about spycraft itself. I’m interested in injecting that intelligence into a novel down the road.
3. Busy schedule these next few weeks. Still, gotta find time to put the important stuff in motion…