In The Rear View

Not so fast on that calendar page there, kiddies. It's time to do a little inventory and post-mortem on the year passed. Before we go traipsing off into the very round 2008, let us take a look at what moved and shook us in the somewhat more crooked 2007.
There's a war going on, you know. Though we are being told to be gratified by the decrease in casualties (read: Americans), people and things continue to blow up at an alarming rate over there in the Middle East. In case you've lost track, we will soon be celebrating our wood anniversary there, and I can't think of anything more appropriate than the blockheads that got us into this mess in the first place.
This year also found me in Las Vegas with a little extra time on my hands, so I decided to get married. Conveniently enough, my wife just happened to there with me, so it made the whole thing go a lot smoother without that whole courting nonsense. I heartily recommend the three-song Elvis ceremony, with the silver rose bouquet. Now that's class.
A lot of folks came and went this year, some just to visit, and others left permanently. Darrent Williams started things off on a pretty sad note, providing ominous foreshadowing of a football season that played more like a soap opera than a sporting event. We ended the year with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Her death was also just a prelude to more anarchy and killing. Those fireworks you hear might be the Middle East erupting.
Or it might be the nutjob down the street on his way to the mall, getting ready to make himself famous via the tried and true American invention of the gun-crazed rampage. Then again, he never seemed like the kind of guy who would do such a thing, since he was always so quiet and kept to himself, what with all that ranting on the Internet and target practice on the dummies he had dressed like his high school principal.
We were also treated to a marathon of a presidential campaign that started more than a full calendar year before the election. If you haven't made up your mind yet, don't worry, because Al Gore has yet to announce his candidacy. For that matter, neither has Pat Paulsen.
On a more personal note, I got to see Bruce Springsteen play live one more time. This brings my personal total to: I've lost count. Any year that gets me to a Springsteen show and has me dancing down the aisle to "Viva Las Vegas" with my wife and kid stacks up as a pretty good one. So here's my prescription for 2008: More dancing in the aisle, and less killing. I know it's a crazy notion, but it just might catch on.

Perfection Is Overrated

Like it or not, the football season for this fan ends today. The Denver Broncos will limp on into the offseason with a losing record, and the Colorado Buffaloes have a chance to win a little respect and a bowl game. Oh sure, they'll keep playing well into the new year, and I will find some reason to stay interested in the NFL playoffs and I will rationalize a rooting interest in the NCAA "national championship" game. But these will be vague associations at best.
Last night I found myself, along with the most of the rest of the football fanciers of the country, watching the New England Patriots throw off the burden of a twelve point third quarter deficit to go on to win a record-setting sixteenth game in a row. Depending on how you choose to score this particular event, they may not have actually set a record, since there have been three previous teams who have completed their NFL seasons without a loss. The Miami Dolphins were the last to do it in 1972, and the Chicago Bears won all their regular season games in both 1934 and 1942, only to lose the championship game after that.
I sat there, apropos of absolutely nothing, cheering for the New York Giants. I could say that I wanted the Giants to win because of my close ties to their organization through the son of my friend who lives in Manhattan, but that would be a lie. I'm still holding a grudge against the Giants for bursting the Broncos' perfect season bubble back in 1998, and the pasting they gave my beloved Broncos way back in Super Bowl XXI (39 to 20). I was simply hoping for the wheels to come off the fun bus that the Patriots were on.
Does this make me a bad sport? It could be that this year's disappointments were the cause of my bad attitude. Even my fantasy team finished under .500. all of these vicarious tragedies made me wish bad things upon Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and the Great Stoneface of New England, Bill Belichick. Now that there has been one team to win all sixteen of their regular season games, the bar has been raised. Congratulations. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a little more than a month and a half until pitchers and catchers have to report to Spring Training.

The Suvey Says....

Iraq's interior ministry spokesman said Saturday that seventy-five percent of al-Qaida in Iraq's terrorist network had been destroyed this year. Kudos to the forces that have worked so tirelessly to eliminate this scourge. And what of the other twenty-five percent? I'm sorry, but I'm one of those "glass half-empty" guys. You've really got to have some sort of good plan for dealing with the quarter of the terrorists that have been carelessly glossed over to really impress me.
In this way, terrorists are a lot like cockroaches. Left alone, how long will it take for al-Qaida to swarm in multitudes once again? The U.S. military says violence is down sixty percent nationwide, demonstrating success in fighting the terrorist network. Again, what about that other forty percent? How do we rationalize the forty percent of the people killed by twenty-five percent of the terrorists left in a country where forty-eight percent of the people would rather not have all this "help".
Because that's the bottom line, isn't it? Al-Qaida is hanging around Iraq primarily for the opportunity to destabilize things. As long as U.S. troops are there to push against, they have something to gain. They aren't going away. In the meantime, they can just hop over the border and make a mess of things in Pakistan, where they have set a whole country on fire with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. All one needs to do is turn on the lights and watch them scatter. What to do then? When I lived in an apartment that had a roach problem, I worked tirelessly with various sprays and traps until I reached the only logical conclusion: Move out. Let the roaches have the place. Surrender to the vermin by exercising the choice not to fight. I predict that we would end up with thirty-five percent less chaos.

That Space Cadet Glow

Holiday party season is in full swing. I know this because I have already hosted a few. This is significant because I can:

1. Remember hosting them.



2. Did not "hoist" anything.



3. Made no embarassing post-party phone calls

Yes, gone are the days when there was a bleary two-week stretch of regrettable moments, punctuated with sincere apologies. It was during this period, many years ago, that I was late to work for one of the very few times in my life. When I say "late", I mean more than an hour. I mean more than two hours. I mean the kind of late where your boss calls you and wakes you from a hung over coma to remind you that Christmas Eve is, in fact, the busiest day of the year at a video store.

Alas, my friend and I had been up very late the night before getting in shape for the next night's company Christmas party. The problem was, we had to live through the mother of all days in a whirlwind retail environment feeling like most of our internal organs had been replaced with cast iron replicas. But lo and behold, at ten o'clock when the doors were finally closed and virtually every tape in the place had been rented (even "Rhinestone"), we happily tipped a few more to congratulate our success and survival.

And there were more opportunities as New Year's Eve approached. We toasted and celebrated, rang out the old and rang in the new. We were everybody's favorite party animals. Then, suddenly, we were back to business as usual. That meant that we had to wait all the way until Super Bowl Sunday to have a solid excuse to tie one on.

But I was never late to work again. Sure, there plenty of mornings when I had the look and feel of a well-used latrine, but I shoveled myself out the door and made myself pay the price for the night before. Imagine how pleased I am to find, as I age more gracefully, that you can have plenty of fun essentially for free. Do I miss it? Every so often, when I'm watching a particularly earnest exchange over a pair of hastily emptied glasses of red wine, or when I hear a heartfelt appreciation of some tiny thing brought on by one too many beers. But I still laugh, and I have a good time, and I don't have to rely on somebody else's account of the evening to know that I did. Cheers!

Sure Thing

There are no sure things. You could be walking across the street tomorrow and get hit by a bus. Or you could be shot by an assassin who then blows himself up. That's what happened to Benazir Bhutto today. Remember how a couple of days ago we were congratulating ourselves on the relative calm in the Middle East? Maybe it's time to rethink that.
Halfway around the world, as we drag the recycling to the curb and start to put the decorations away, life continues in its most unpleasant form. We continue to wonder how things could have gotten so crazy, but then we don't tend to acknowledge chaos until it blows up in our collective faces. At least nine people were killed across Pakistan in rioting that broke out in the aftermath of the assassination. In the southern port city of Karachi, where Bhutto was born, her angry supporters shot at police and burned a gas station. Here in America we only see that kind of behavior after someone wins a Super Bowl.
But this is different. When Americans set things on fire, it doesn't usually imply the destabilization of an entire region. Indianapolis does not control its own nuclear stockpile. Pakistan does. Now the upcoming elections in January may have to be postponed, a choice that President Pervez Musharraf will undoubtedly use to fuel his fire against the ever-popular "Islamic extremists". "I want to appeal to the nation to remain peaceful and exercise restraint," he said.
Sure thing.

I'll Take That "To Go"

President Pinhead, still voicing concern about special project spending by Congress, signed a five hundred fifty-five billion dollar bill Wednesday that funds the Iraq war well into 2008 and keeps government agencies running through next September. But in an even bolder move, he announced a new government program he called "The Special Sandwich Initiative". Under the auspices of a newly formed agency, all American citizens will be provided with one sandwich each day, excluding federal holidays.
This announcement was met with the attendant confusion and furor one might expect, as Congress asked for clarification on several key points: Will these sandwiches be made to order, or will they be pre-packaged? If a citizen prefers a nice wrap or an open-faced sandwich, will there be a way to compensate for these variances? Do chips come with that?
Pinhead said, through a mouthful of sourdough roll and smoked turkey, "Hey, we're spending two hundred and seventy million dollars a day on this thing in Iraq, why not spread the wealth?" Wiping him mouth on a napkin hastily provided by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he continued, "Hey, I'm the President, right? Since federal anti-trust regulations prohibit me from buying the world a Coke, I will buy my country a sandwich. There is still more to be done to rein in government spending. In February I will submit my budget proposal for fiscal year 2009, which will once again restrain spending, keep taxes low, and continue us on a path towards a balanced budget. I look forward to working with the Congress in the coming year to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, and make sure if they don't want to have mayo, they can get that spicy brown mustard instead."

Should I Shave Or Should I Grow Now?

George Carlin used to do a bit about "whiskers" versus "beards". It was his contention that good, clean, upstanding members of American society did not sport beards. Facial hair was strictly for the miscreants and troublemakers: Castro, Marx, Stalin, Lenin, and just about any communist you might care to name. Real Americans would never wear a beard. Abraham Lincoln? He had whiskers.
I thought of this as I reflected on Santa's visit last night. It really is the rare exception for a bearded man to gain trust and acceptance from all the children of the world. My father, however, would probably have found reason to keep an eye on Mister Claus. He claimed that anyone who covered his face with hair was hiding something. I heard this diatribe dozens of times throughout my youth. I heard it so many times that, for a time, I too ascribed to it. This was partly out of my unfortunate inability to grow much more than patchy stubble, and partly out of respect for my father.
For several years, I maintained a rather prolific moustache. I have very visceral memories of ice forming on it as I wandered through the sub-zero patches of many Colorado winters. I assume that, because I never heard about it from my father, moustaches don't hide much but your upper lip, and are therefore an acceptable outward symbol of manhood. As my hairline made a fast retreat in my mid-twenties, my "cookie-duster" was a nice stopgap for my eventual surrender to hair loss.
But when I moved to California, I became more convinced that I could maintain a beard, away from the watchful eye of my father. All the other guys at the warehouse where I worked sported all manner of facial hair, the most popular being the goatee, a kind of badge of polite hippiedom. And so for a few more years, I went in and out of phases where parts of my jaw and chin were covered with fur. My wife tolerated it, but always sighed with relief when I cut it all off to start again.
Then my son was born, and I can remember vividly how he recoiled from my scruffy face when I bent down to kiss him goodnight. That was reason enough for me. I've been essentially clean-shaven since, including a shearing of my entire head every three months. It is amazing how quick my showers are these days, but now I have two weeks off, and it's tempting to just let my freak flag fly one more time. Just to see what I'm trying to hide, aside from my aversion to shaving, that is.

Giving In

From across the room he raced at me
I braced for the impact
He hit me square in the chest
and knocked me back
He grabbed my arm and pulled
I twisted and turned
I tried to get away, but not too hard
I tried to escape - barely
I was wrestling with an angel
on my living room floor
I could sense that my shoulders
were close to the rug
In my head I could hear the count
one, two, but not quite three
And then it came to me clearly:
I could let the angel win
All of my surrender will now be open
for vast interpretation

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

The assignment was to write a fable:

I was a little kid. My mom sang a song. "Jeepers, creepers, where did you get those eyes?" It was dark. I used to cry and go to the bathroom a lot. Teddy was scared too. I ran into my mom's room. She told me to get out of her room. I say, "I'm sorry Mama." I don't want to be in the dark. My brother asks can he go in there an watch TV. I say, "That's not fair." I always tell my dad I had to be in the dark. He got mad. He told Teddy to go to sleep with me. "Not in my bed," Toby said, "Move. I need some room. Scoot over." I said, "It's my bed, you scoot over." And then we fell asleep.

This was, with a few spelling and punctuation corrections, what one of my fourth graders turned in. This is a kid who gets into a lot of trouble. The fact that he finished the assignment at all was a complete triumph for him. And me.
Now we both have two weeks of vacation. Time to spend away from school. Time to spend with our families. I know I need the break, but going back will be a little easier now. It will be easier because, in spite of the fact that I gave him only three out of four points for not including a moral on his fable, I know that I still have a lot to learn.

Happy Eid al-Adha!

The Associated Press, my favorite kind of press, reports that residents of Baghdad packed the capital's parks and amusement rides on Saturday, taking advantage of a lull in violence and the Islamic feast of Eid al-Adha to venture out of their homes. Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, lasts for three days and commemorates Ibraham's (Abraham) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son. Muslims believe the son to be Ishmael rather than Isaac as told in the Old Testament. Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs.

And now that we know what Eid al-Adha is, let us re-examine our terms: A "lull" in violence for residents in Baghdad would include a suicide car bomb exploding at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi army and police in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliyah Saturday afternoon, killing four people and wounding another six. And on the southern outskirts of the capital, a roadside bomb wounded five bystanders near a hospital in the town of Madin, police said. It was unclear what the target was.

I suppose the reason to celebrate Eid al-Adha is the clarity of purpose. God told Ibraham to kill his son, and it was clear what, or whom, the target was. Those were the good old days.

The Write Thing To Do

I find myself on the horns of a mighty dilemma. After resolving my ambivalence about Oreos without trans fat, I am now faced with a decision that I would rather not make. Late-night talk shows are beginning to surrender to the inevitable and ugly pressure of a protracted writers' strike. I found it easy to sneer at Ellen DeGeneres as she came back to work after a few days of intense introspection, or roughly the same number of shows that she missed because of the whole "Iggy Incident". Then Carson Daly caved. Would we have expected any different from a guy whose talent level puts him on a par with Tara Reid?

Now several more weeks have passed. There have been heroic stories of stars sacrificing their salaries and paying their writing staff out of their own pockets. There has been amazing shows of solidarity. Until now. Today, leaders of striking television writers plan to meet with David Letterman's production company in an attempt to reach a separate deal that could return the "Late Show" to the air with its writing staff. In a joint statement, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert said: "We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence."

I too am feeling that nuanced ambivalence. Do I continue to steer clear of shows that General Electric and Viacom dangle in front of me, relying on reruns or even (gasp) reading a book? I miss my nightly dose of snickering at the world through the lens of Stewart and Colbert. I have a couple of weeks off, and I could actually stay up late enough to watch David Letterman if I wanted to. The irony being this is precisely the kind of thing I look for these guys to provide me with some perspective.

Ah well, since I can't figure it out tonight, I guess I'll just nip out into the kitchen and have myself a few more of those Oreos.

Complaint Department

This, as the kids say, is deep. In a recent Associate Press poll, the Transportation Security Administration came in tied for second place on the list of least-liked federal agencies. They were tied with the Internal Revenue Service, always a perennial-least-liked agency. And number one? Why, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, of course.
It makes sense that the IRS would be the scourge of our robust American ideals, since they're all about asking us to give money that we made back to them. There's fear built right into that one. It makes you wonder just how much withholding someone who works in the auditing department has taken out.
But what is it about the TSA? Screeners are "just rigid, intransigent, inflexible, unpleasant, and they always have the fact that they've got the security of the nation that they're falling back on," said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association. So there's that Fear Factor again. If we don't take away your hand sanitizer or pat you down just a little more emphatically than you are completely comfortable with, well, then the terrorists win. Everyone knows that it takes more than three ounces of hair gel to blow up a plane, anyway.
Take heart, since TSA responds to every complaint it receives, according to spokeswoman Ellen Howe, adding that each complaint is forwarded to the federal security director at the airport in question. In the cases AP reviewed, the most common response was a form letter, apologizing for inconveniences, often blaming the problem of long lines on the local airport and forwarding complaints about inappropriate patdowns to the airports where they occurred.
Which leaves us with FEMA, the repository of the nation's frustration with government agencies. The fact that their solutions to emergencies seem to become new emergencies (concerns about formaldehyde in travel trailers in the Gulf Coast area), leaves them alone at the top of the heap. These guys don't just operate from fear, they actively create it. This is what we call job security.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Old habits die hard. Change yourself and your work will seem different. There are are a lot of ways to describe the tendency we humans have to stay in a rut until we are forced, sometimes bodily, in to new ruts. The deepest ones are those we refer to as "tradition."
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of traditions. I'm a regular Tevye when it comes to endless repetition of some activity or ritual. It assures me of a front row seat, for one thing. This holiday season found me humming right along: stuffing the turkey, putting up the Christmas lights, running my ten-K race. Then there were some bumps in the road, and I was tossed out of my rut.
It was deemed appropriate and about time to try something a little different for New Year's Eve. Our traditional fort in the living room will be given a respectful rest as we attempt to brave the last night of the year at a (shudder) party. This was a challenge for me, specifically from the standpoint that I had adopted the tradition of making a fort in the living room precisely because the idea of going to a party on New Year's Eve creeped me out. Not that I don't like parties. I'm just not terrifically fond of New Year's parties. We'll just say that it has not been my favorite occasion in year's past. Erecting a fort in our living room with all the furniture and blankets and strings of lights has helped exorcise those demons.
But now that my son is convinced that everyone rings in the New Year by turning the couch on its side and pinning sheets together to form a tent in front of the television, maybe it's time to take a step outside the box I have created. And then there's the matter of the Winter Assembly at my school. This year's class has been, to put it mildly, a challenge. For the past several years, I have been the "cool teacher" who takes his kids up on stage and brings down the house by rapping along with Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis". We won't be making a return engagement this year. We just couldn't get a rehearsal together. There was always something far more interesting or annoying to attend to in those very few spare moments at the end of the day. Many of my students, as well as their teacher, were very sad to have our shot at stardom taken away.
I made peanut brittle. The teachers are still coming over to my house before we all scatter for two weeks of rest and recuperation. We'll still have our Christmas morning of lolling about on the bed as we pore over the contents of our stockings. There will still be great comfort in the sameness of it all. But there will also be part of me that is secretly anxious about the things that are different. At least now it won't be a secret.

Animal Planet

Otter and Boon are standing on a hill, looking down on the athletic fields of Faber College. As Boon tees up a ball to prepare to practice his golf swing, he notices Douglas C. Niedermeyer in the middle of a full-on, spittle infused rant at the expense of one Kent Dorfman. Otter spies the abuse that Flounder is receiving, and says, "He can't do that do that to our pledges." To which Boon replies, "Only we can do that to our pledges."
This is the scene that ran through my head as I read the news item about how U.S. military commanders in Iraq didn't know Turkey was sending warplanes to bomb in northern Iraq until the planes had already crossed the border. Don't they know that Iraq is our pledge, and if any hazing is to be done, it should be done with our spittle, tanks and bombs? These comments follow complaints by Iraqi leaders Monday that Turkey hadn't coordinated with Baghdad before sending bombers to strike targets of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. "They said it was hot pursuit," a US state department official told the Associated Press. "But our message to them was that they need to make sure we're aware of what they're doing and that we find out about it before the guns start firing." I think maybe someone has missed the point of a sneak attack: that would be the "sneak" part. The Turkish army also sent soldiers about one and a half miles into northern Iraq in an overnight operation on Tuesday, Kurdish officials said. Kurdish officials said the Turkish troops left Iraq about fifteen hours later. Yes, you read that right: They left about fifteen hours later. Not days. Not months. Hours.
The United States and Iraq have, however, called on Turkey to avoid a major operation, fearing such an offensive could disrupt one of the most tranquil regions in Iraq. Besides, everyone knows that the United States has everything under control over there, and if there is any trouble, we'll handle it. Or in the words of Dean Wormer, "The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me."

You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry

The big clock on the wall tells us that the big day is fast approaching. The day that children all over the world anxiously await: The Day of Unrepentant Avarice and Greed. The kids in my fourth grade class are fairly vibrating with anticipation. Each and every one of them is certain that this will be the year that Mom and Dad finally let loose and all those spending limits go out the window in order to get their cherubs just exactly what they deserve. As their teacher, I hope that is exactly what happens.
Three weeks ago, when I was preparing to have report card conferences with all the parents of my class, I suggested to my students that this being just a short time before Christmas that it would behoove them to do everything they could to put a smile on the faces of their caregivers, or at least the ones who do all the shopping. I tried to paint a picture for them of a world where bad grades were not connected with a new X-Box 360. I hoped to instill in them some sense of shame. Over the years I have heard a great many loud pronouncements from parents about how "we're just going to have to take all that stuff back to the store if your grades don't improve." Then the next trimester, we're talking about the connection between all the video games that are being played instead of completing homework.
Far be it from me to say that the kids are spoiled. In many ways, they are devoid of the basic necessities. As a parent myself I know the dig: If I can scrape together what it takes to get my kid that particular item, then I will have succeeded. The face of your child as they pull the wrapping paper of that must-have, well, it's a Master Card moment. But what if your kid is failing math? What kind of message can you send then?
I'm enjoying this little bit that has been making the circuit for the past few days: After catching his fifteen-year-old smoking pot, a father sold the hard-to-get "Guitar Hero III" video game he bought his son for ninety dollars for Christmas at an online auction, fetching nine thousand dollars. "I am still considering getting him a game for his Nintendo. Maybe something like Barbie as the Island Princess or Dancing with the Stars ... I know he will just love them," the father (a school teacher) said. And just maybe that extra eight thousand nine hundred and ten dollars can go to some sort of college fund - once the kid sobers up.

Urban and Sub-Urban

Autumn has finally descended upon the streets of Oakland, and the gutters are choked with a colorful array of dead leaves, awaiting the inevitable downpours that come just before Christmas to choke the storm drains across the city. This morning was the calm before the inevitable storm, and I enjoyed running through the neighborhoods for my morning exercise. Still, it was hard not to notice my surroundings as that of a big city. Perhaps the most profound being the shop just two doors down from the Catholic church sells ladies' fashion and is called "My Sexy Life Boutique".
I thought about the visits I have made to our friends in southern California who live in a more more secluded enclave. It's not exactly a gated community, but I found that I could take a run for several miles without running into any sort of commercial real estate. I knew where the video store was, but I wasn't going to have to run past two of them if I chose not to. Back home I don't have as many options. I'm certain to pass a few 7-11s a couple of grocery stores, and countless apartment buildings. Down south I saw only single family homes, and my iPod ironically chimed in with Rush's "Subdivisions".
Last week, I had a chat with my friend with whom I grew up on the "mean streets" of Boulder, Colorado. She is now happily ensconced as a mover and shaker in her son's school. She's not the queen of the PTA, but she knows her. She was rolling her eyes at the insistence on brand names, specifically that of Sharpie markers of various colors, each denoting a specific grade level or activity. I told her that at my school, we confiscate Sharpie markers. I told her that the kids at our school use the permanent markers to leave their gang affiliations or thoughts about current faculty members on walls, stairways, desks and chairs. Even the little kids. Pencil is just so much easier to wash off.
It was only after I hung up that I realized that we could be raising money for my school by selling our confiscated Sharpies to the suburban moms who need to keep track of their kids at their annual Jog-A-Thons. It's a win-win situation, especially if they get to jog past My Sexy Life Boutique.

Splendid Isolation

The United States found itself isolated today in battling against new emissions goals for developed countries. The White House renewed its call for emissions targets for countries like China and India. They said that any new agreement to succeed the UN Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, must acknowledge a country's sovereign right to pursue economic growth and energy security. "The negotiations must proceed on the view that the problem of climate change cannot be adequately addressed through commitments for emissions cuts by developed countries alone. We must give sufficient emphasis to the important and appropriate role that the larger emitting developing countries should play in a global effort to address climate change," croaked the voice from behind the curtain.
That's not a wizard, it's just a very dumb man. The Jacobshavn Ice Stream, a glacier on the west side of Greenland that drains about six and a half percent of the continent's massive ice sheet. Between 2000 and 2003, its rate of retreat nearly doubled. The Qori Kalis Glacier in Peru, whose initial retreat rate around 1991 was about six meters per year but now is sixty meters per year. NASA climate scientist, Jay Zwally, remarked this week: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions." Because of global warming, Inuit people no longer feel safe travelling on ice where they travelled for centuries, and some Inuit communities are sliding into the sea, forcing their relocation to new sites. The White House does not see this as a uniquely "American" problem.
What's a Scarecrow to do? There are four hundred and one day's left in the Pinhead's Regime. Let's hope for a protracted cold snap while the brains in Washington thaw out.

Shoppers Rush Home With Their Treasures

'Tis the season to shop madly. Moreto the point, this is the time that tries men's souls. Too obscure? How about conspicuous consumption? To quote Johnny Mathis (or David Seville, for that matter), "A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots is the wish of Barney and Ben. Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk is the hope of Janice and Jen." And we wouldn't want to disappoint Barney, Jen or their siblings, would we?
Nowadays, however, our children do not cry out for fancy new shootin' irons or a Betsy Wetsy. They've got a hankerin' for Wii. We are the happy owners of Wii already. We love to play with our Wii, or at leat we know that our son is content to spend ours playing with his Wii. When we got it, we went Wii, Wii, Wii all the way home. Okay. Enough already. You get the idea. I feel less anxious this year because I know that the must-have item of the year is already safely ensconced in our house, and we can be somewhat blase when the topic of videogame systems is broached. I'm just glad that my son doesn't need a Cabbage Patch kid.
Back in the mid-1980's, I was at ground zero of the Coleco-mass-produced influx of the lumpy mutants. I was part of a crew that unloaded the forty-eight foot trailers that back up to the docks of our local Target store. Beginning in November, we had special orders to grab whatever dolls we saw on the trailer and send them immediately out to the sales floor. We had one kid who was especially wiry and adept at slithering through the other freight to find the random six or eight bright yellow boxes that contained shoppers' gold. We always looked with mild pity at the poor red-vested soul who had the misfortune to carry the merchandise out the swinging doors into the toy aisle. I remember one evening in particular, when we received two dozen dolls, staring blankly through their cellophane windows, awaiting adoption in all their one-of-a-kind glory. These were loaded neatly on a rolling cart, pushed by sales associate Victim out into a pre-Christmas frenzy that was every bit as horrifying as a school of sharks, where even injured sharks are consumed without hesitation. There were always more shoppers than dolls. There was always shouting. There were always tears. I was glad to be on the other side of the wall from all that free enterprise. It still gives me chills.
And so tonight, with ten more shopping days, I feel safe: Safe in the knowledge that those I love will be happily surprised on Christmas morning, and safe from the crazy eyes and clawing fingers of those rabid consumers.

Lookin' For Love In All The Wrong Places

Hi, my name's Dave, and I'm an appreciation addict. (Hi, Dave!)
If the first step is to recognize that you have a problem, then I've been on this particular step for a good long time. My desperate need to be liked goes way back to third grade, when I willingly subjected myself to being Mary Symanski's "robot" for four square. At least that's my first recollection of sacrificing a certain degree of self-respect for acceptance. I'm sure there were others.
No matter how often I find myself wincing at the Stuart Smalley nature of all self-esteem issues, I still end up wondering how I run so close to empty. After all, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. Or I will make every effort to ensure that they do. At least I will do this initially, until I reach a disjoint: Why doesn't this person love me? I've worked so hard to get them to love me. There must be something wrong with them.
As I've said, it's a sickness. I know. Even with this seeming boatload of self-awareness, I still find myself in situations that I just can't fathom. Why, for example, would I choose to be an elementary school teacher if I am so anxious to be loved? There's always a satisfying flurry of good feelings at the beginning of the year, but that wears off pretty quickly once we all realize that fourth grade isn't about "The Name Game" or passing out textbooks. I'm the boss, after all, and you can't be a really great boss if everyone loves you.
Or so I'm told. Which is why the number of management positions in my life continues to puzzle me. At each juncture, I've made an effort to show that I'm still "one of the guys", but once the employee reviews come out, things change. I am, after all, the Man.
And so it goes. It helps to get a hug from one of my kids, or to connect on a meaningful level with a parent. It helps to know that everything gets more difficult around the holidays: from parking to interpersonal relations. This too shall pass, but for now I feel the need for a fistful of chocolate chip cookies and a few more hours before I open that door to start again. As Scarlett O'Hara, another famous acceptance junkie once noted, "Tomorrow is another day."

Reykjavík Calling

Hello America. What I am about to tell you should come as no shock to anyone who has been watching the news or reading the papers or not comatose for the past seven years: Our country is in the hands of a seriously affected group of nitwits. The most recent example of nitwittery came when a teenager convinced the White House he was Iceland's president and managed to schedule a call with our Pinhead in Chief. "My call was transferred around a few times until I got hold of Bush's secretary and managed to book a call meeting with Bush the following Monday evening," said sixteen-year old Vifill Atlason. Icelandic police turned up at his door the day of the planned call and took him in for questioning. Sadly, since the call was never completed, we may never know if the President's refrigerator is in fact running.
As fluff pieces go, this could just float away, unless it just happened to come to light on the very same day that Pinhead vetoed legislation that would have expanded government-provided health insurance for children. This was his second slap-down of a bipartisan effort in Congress to dramatically increase funding for the popular program. In a voice far removed from reason, he warbled, "Ultimately, our nation's goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage, not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage." Of the forty-three million people nationwide who lack health insurance, more than six million are under eighteen years old. That's more than nine percent of all children.
Meanwhile, if something should happen to Mister Atlason's dialing finger, Iceland's very generous National Health Care System would take care of it. It is a wacky planet, after all.

Smote

The most troubling thing to me about the most recent flurry of nutjob shootings is the way the gunmen, or perhaps more correctly "gun-nuts", always end up turning the gun on themselves in the end. It's a simple enough matter to put one's self out of the misery endured on a daily basis. My younger brother had a friend that suggested that those last moments are painful enough, so why not sell flavored mouthpieces for shotguns? Who wants their last taste on earth to be gun oil? Why not something cheery like banana-nut?
Nope. These folks are always so bent inside that they feel the need to take a few of us along with them. Robert A. Hawkins' suicide note read, in part: "I've been a piece of (expletive) my entire life it seems this is my only option. I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster but please understand that I just don't want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life. I just want to take a few pieces of (expletive) with me. I love all of you so much and I don't want anyone to miss me just think about how much better you are off without me to support. I want my friends to remember all the good times we had together. Just think tho I'm gonna be (expletive) famous."
I would love to work up some sympathy for Mister Hawkins, but since they are still burying his victims, it seems he will have to wait. Matthew Murray, the tiny brain in charge of the Colorado church shootings had this to say before he loaded his weapons and went off in search of Christians to kill: "God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world." Murray was initially believed to have been brought down by security guard Jean Assam. "I just prayed to the Holy Spirit to guide me," Assam said at a packed news conference Monday. "I give the credit to God. This has got to be God, because of the firepower he had versus what I have." Nice shootin', God, but alas the coroner has pronounced Murray's cause of death to be the ever popular single gunshot to the head. He wasn't going to be taken alive.
He wasn't. Neither were Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Or Kip Kinkel. Or Charles Carl Roberts. And the hits just keep comin'.

A Case Of The Mondays

I knew that it was going to be ugly when I rounded the corner and saw our school's recycling dumpster pushed up against one of our portable classrooms. The last time someone had made the effort to move the rather large, white rolling bin, it had been used as a stepladder for reaching the chain basketball nets on our playground. It had been put to much the same use this morning, only this time the perpetrators were not interested in stealing equipment from an elementary school kids' playground. This time they were more concerned with ransacking a kindergarten class.
Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that these master criminals had first tried to gain entry by dumping all the potted flowers that we had recently placed around our campus and stacking the pots up to reach the window. When that proved to be too short, they went for the dumpster. That brought them easy access to the wire mesh that covered the window, which they peeled back before they smashed the glass. And once they got in, what do you suppose they got? They unplugged the computers, but that seemed beyond their meager capacity, so they tossed the personal copier out onto the asphalt.
They didn't take much. They seemed content just to break stuff. They were probably scared off by the arrival of the custodian, who spent the better part of her morning trying to put things back into some sort of order. The kindergarten class got to meet in the library today, and for those kids it probably seemed like a special treat. For the rest of us who dealt with the debris and filed it with the ever-growing list of stories about break-ins and vandalism, we just kept moving and tried not to think about it too much. We tried not to think about it because when we did, we got angry, and anger is what made that mess happen in the first place.
Tonight when I was riding up the hill, I noticed a scattering of plastic debris on the sidewalk next to the side gate of the school. It was the remnants of the CD player, the one thing that we had assumed the vandals had taken for themselves. They hadn't. Instead they had hurled it over the fifteen foot chain link fence to the street below. It won't be used to play music or story tapes again. It won't even be sold to buy drugs. It's going to end up in the dumpster right next to the recycling bin. We'll get the window fixed, and buy a new CD player, and we'll start over again. And even though we ache for some sort of frontier justice, some sort of clue that will send the idiots who did this to jail, we know that we will have to be satisfied with the knowledge that our kids are safe and no one got hurt. But we can dream, can't we?

Sound Track

I am a whole-hearted subscriber to the idea of "theme music". For me, this fixation goes all the way back to the days of listening to Bill Cosby and his tales of go-cart races, where each kid had their own theme song as they flew down "Dead Man's Hill" (”It was called Dead Man’s Hill because it went straight down, for about a quarter of a mile, and then it emptied out onto a freeway”). This resonated for me, since my friends and I had been making the soundtrack to our imaginations with our mouths for years. I was especially fond of mocking a theremin as we traveled the trackless void of the vacant lot behind our house, in search of a monster that would eventually loom as tall as two or three houses. For us, the intensity of the event was based solely on how tall the creature was. We understood this from watching "Science Fiction Theater", with all manner of freakishly large insects, and even Killer Shrews.
That was all well and good for creeping across Martian landscapes, but for my own intense imaginings, sometimes I needed a more somber tone. This was the first soundtrack album that I wore out: "Bless The Beasts And The Children". Before the advent of portable tape players and personal stereos, I used to play one particular cut, "Cotton's Dream" over and over before I went outside to engage in the pre-teen ennui that I had worked hard to cultivate. The brooding, somber piano was the perfect accompaniment to my brooding and somber moods. I wanted to be as misunderstood and righteous as Cotton himself was in the movie. After a few dozen plays, I could hear the melody in my head as I walked out of my room and into the world I was creating.
Imagine my chagrin when, five years later, that same piece reappeared as "Nadia's Theme" after the ABC television network lent the music for Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci's performance during the 1976 Summer Olympics. That's when I discovered that composer Barry De Vorzon had already sold that piece again as the theme to the soap opera, "The Young and The Restless". Didn't they understand that this was the soundtrack to my own personal soap opera?
Over the years I have made peace with this sonic conundrum, and moved on to the Jerry Goldsmith score to "Patton" and eventually themes like "Chariots of Fire" and "Rocky". Still, every so often when the clouds are low and grey, and the house is empty, I hear the sad strains of "Cotton's Dream".

Whatever Oprah Wants...

Oprah and Hillary in Iowa City,
They're not K-I-S-S-I-N-G
That's because Oprah, her supreme highness of all things media and worthiness, has decided to show favor upon Barack Obama. "The Winfrey Effect" is in full effect in Iowa, where next month delegates will start forming a line behind the candidate they think will give their party the best chance of winning the general election that is still a year away. Thousands of voters, many who've never had contact with the Obama's campaign before, have signed up on his web site or come into campaign offices to pick up tickets for the gala that will feature an appearance by her Oprahness. It is, especially for Iowa, a frenzy.
And what makes Oprah such a bellwether when it comes to politics? Well, she's got her own TV show, and a magazine that arrives monthly packed with fresh insights of Winfrey-Think and a glorious new photo of the queen of all media smiling of the cover. And a ton of money. She hopes that others will bring their tons of money to drop on the campaign of the Senator from Illinois. Fair enough, it's essentially the same thing she's done for books for lo these many years: "What's Oprah reading?" "Who does Oprah want to be President?" First of all, let's remember that she has featured famous nut-job and pretty-boy Tom Cruise on her show, bounding over and onto furniture. Maybe a little Ritalin would have helped. Then again, James Frey didn't show up to bounce on the couch, but had to make a repeat appearance to apologize for being a big fat liar.
Am I suggesting that Barack Obama is a Scientologist or a great big fibber? Not in the least. I respect and admire the man for his courage and convictions, if not his vague sense of responsibility for his vote to go to war in Iraq. For the record, he's been regretting it ever since, but he did vote for it, along with several additional funding bills since.
But so has Hillary, so maybe it's all going to come down to who wins the coveted endorsement prize. Oprah's already got her man, and she wants you to drop a couple thousand dollars to find out why. And if you're lucky, that will be the night that everybody in attendance also gets a BRAND NEW CAR!
Sorry, I just don't get it.

Yesterday In History

A day that will live in infamy. That's what Franklin Roosevelt called it. I tend to remember Pearl Harbor Day primarily because of a rather tasteless joke that my father used to tell. Don't ask me to relate the details, since it was long ago and it was an inside joke for which I cannot remember the punch line. But I do remember the date, and it continues to live in infamy. Historically speaking, of course, December seventh is a pretty full day even without the whole sneak attack thing: In 1917, the The U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary to more fully involve them in the war to end all wars, unless you count all the wars that have taken place since. On this date in 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the US Constitution. It was in 1930 that W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcast video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also included the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show. TV Funnyman Ted Knight, God Rest His Soul, was born on this day in 1923, and twenty-six years later along came the enigmatic Tom Waits. On this date in 1970 the contraption that was Rube Goldberg came to a screeching halt, sixty-eight years after the man who was instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed, Thomas Nast, put down his pen for the last time.
Is December seventh any more infamous than December sixth? Yesterday in history, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, banning slavery. Meredith Hunter was killed by the Hells Angels during a The Rolling Stones's concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, putting a great big period on the sentence that was the Summer of Love. A hundred years and a day ago, a coal mine explosion at Monongah, West Virginia kills three hundred sixty-two workers. That doesn't quite stack up to Pearl Harbor numbers, but it doesn't seem insignificant.
I guess when we're judging infamy, we go by body count. How sadly and quaintly American of us.

You Can Buy If For A Song - If It's A Real Good One

Rest easy, America! Your President is on your side! You say you got yourself in trouble back when mortgage rates were so darn low that you bought a twenty-seven acre estate in the swamps of New Jersey, complete with revolving hot tub and mirrored ceilings - in the garage? Well, stop your worrying, bubby, because help is on the way. The government's plan (your government, after all), worked out with private lenders, would allow some borrowers with interest rates that are slated to rise sharply in the coming months to either refinance the loan or have their current rate frozen for five years.
Okay, I should come clean here: I had an adjustable rate mortgage. The past tense of said mortgage is what gives me the strength to write these words now. A few years back, our financial advisor noticed this and made a face. It was a face of a financial advisor who wanted to give my wife and I advice but was trying to frame his suggestion in a polite way. "And just why did you decide upon an adjustable rate instead of fixed?" he asked.
My wife and I sat placidly and made vague attempts to sound as if we knew what we were talking about. Adjustable rates mean that they can go down if the rates continue to drop, right?
"What if they go up?"
And thus the conversation ended as we locked in a very pleasant and low rate for ourselves and ever since that day we have looked askance at those with adjustable rate mortgages as if they were compulsive gamblers. Now the Federal Pixies in charge of such things are looking to set a certain group of homeowners up with what amounts to an extension on their credit. It puts me in mind of the ATMs you find in the corner of most casinos. After you lose your shirt, why not buy yourself a new one so we can have that one too?
What's the impact of all of this? Well, it means that foreclosures will taper off for a while - at least until Pinhead can work out the refinance on his ranch down in Crawford.

Enjoy Every Sandwich

We all know a place where we can get an excellent burger. Most of us know that those excellent burgers will eventually clog our arteries and kill us. Especially the ones with cheese. Especially the ones with just a light spread of mayo on the bottom bun. Especially the ones served with a mound of french fries and a dollop of salad. But not that macaroni crud, ask for the potato salad instead, or even the cole slaw. But do it quick, since Tom's Tavern in Boulder, Colorado is closing for good on December 22, 2007.
There are hundreds of stories about Tom's in my family. That amounts to about one per burger consumed there. When the Pearl Street Mall opened thirty years ago, Tom's had already been in business for eighteen years. Rather than being swallowed up by the new wave of yuppie eateries and shopping opportunities, Tom's remained a sure thing in a world that brought Mork and Mindy to a deli just down the street, and a seemingly endless rotation of restaurants up and down the street where no one drove anymore, but they would walk to Tom's.
My own love affair with Tom's began when my father used to take us there for lunch on a Saturday afternoon. As I got older, I began to appreciate the cozy familiarity of the place. For most of the time that I lived in Boulder, going to Tom's was like entering a cocoon. The only natural light came from the small windows at the south end of the room, just above the pay phone. That's where one would inevitably stand in line and wait for a table, giving the lingering diners the evil eye as your stomach churned in anticipation of the meal that awaited.
And what a meal it was. When I was a more aggressive eater, I ordered two burgers with no fries. The "no fries" was my nod to respect for my digestive system. Somehow that lack of fries would save me, or more likely, allow me more room to pack in burgers.
Years passed, and some things changed: There was outside seating, and even windows installed on the east wall to allow everyone to see the food that they ordered more clearly. The jukebox, the most eclectic and impressive collection of tunes to consume by, was eventually replaced by a CD version, but at least the odd mix of selections was effectively maintained. Through it all, however, the burgers remained consistent. There were plenty of cooks in all those years. I knew one of them through a prior job at a local Mexican restaurant, and I looked forward to hollering at him through the tiny portal through which the food was passed to the waitresses standing just behind the bar.
Tom's was, after all, a Tavern. It's where I first sat fascinated as my father poured salt into his beer. He always ordered "a burger and a draught". I can only guess what was coming out of the tap, but since he felt good about pouring salt into it, it must have needed it. The burgers never did. I'm generally a cheeseburger guy, but this was a place where less truly was more. That hint of mayo and a little bit of ketchup was enough for me. When I was in college, like my brother and father before me, Tom's burgers served as the only solid food that would cure a raging hangover. I am sure there were a few of those that saved my life, at least for a while.
Tom Eldridge died last May, and his family considered its options before deciding to close. As a business, it had been hemmoraging money for years, and the place had finished its natural cycle along with its founder. What happens next on the corner of 11th and Pearl is only speculation, but the words of Warren Zevon, when asked about his own impending death, come back to me as quiet reassurance: "Enjoy every sandwich." I'm sure that goes double for Tom's burgers.

"A Big Mistake"

Sometimes the spin is enough to make you want to throw up. As the clock winds down on Pinhead's last four hundred-odd days, the wave of nausea that comes with each new utterance from the puppet regime of "Dick" Cheney. When those beady eyes stopped rolling around in his head and he stepped to the mike, Pinhead said Tuesday that Iran is dangerous and must be squeezed by international pressure despite a blockbuster intelligence finding that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.
Four years ago. 2003. Do the math. That takes up back before the last election. More to the point, it takes us back to the campaign before the last election. There was great sturm and drang over the need to build up troop levels in the Middle East to combat the threat of an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons. Four years ago is when they stopped their nuclear weapons program. Ooops.
Not to be deterred from stirring the fear pot, Pinhead announced, "Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." What might have been the first good news to come out of that region for several hundred years was met with derision and ever more bristling tension. "So, I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. And the reason why it's a warning signal is that they could restart it." I expect that they will be on that directly after their hydrogen fuel cell technology is up and running. Or maybe once they get the bugs worked out of their ethanol program.
Is it possible that the people of Iran would be happy to be free of the global scrutiny for just a little while and its government might just be willing to follow suit? Is it possible that the leaders of an economically challenged country might anticipate the difficulty to mounting a nuclear weapons program when forty percent of their population lives below the poverty line?
Anybody else remember a country in the Middle East that was reported, via U.S. Intelligence, to have had "weapons of mass destruction". Again: Ooops, and Ouch.

Don't Bring Me No Bad News

That was the song the wicked witch sang in "The Wiz". It was the song that was playing in my head after I finished a couple of my students' report card conferences. On these days, report card conference days, I expect a lot of things: I expect tears, mostly from the kids when confronted with their lackluster performance. I expect smiles, from the knowing smirks of the parents to the surprised grins of the ones who ended up doing better than they thought they would. I expect to forget things, like the faces of the parents who I haven't seen since the first day of school. I expect to make a lot of trips up and down the stairs, checking in on my class and the substitute's ability to deal with the unruly elements of my fourth grade crew. I don't expect confrontations.
I work hard to keep an open line of communication with my students and their parents. I send home weekly behavior and performance reports. I give them my home phone number with the expectation that if there is a question about homework, or a concern about grades, or maybe they just want to check in on what their kid is up to six hours out of every day. When I had a mother refuse to sign her daughter's report card, I confess I was taken aback. These aren't closely guarded secrets, and since I leave my door propped open on most every day, I wonder why I don't have parents dropping by more often. Was this woman denying the reality that her daughter created? Was there something that I wasn't making clear? Was I missing a page that explained why this girl was not subject to the same limits and curriculum that the rest of my students were?
I asked her if she would take the paper, and call me if she had any questions. She harrumphed through pursed lips and, to her credit, she took the unsigned report card and went on her way. I sat for a while in silence, grateful that there wasn't another parent waiting in line to speak with me. Eight hours later, I'm still shaking my head, trying to figure out what I might have done differently. I know the truth, or at least the version that will make it possible for me to go back to work tomorrow. I know that any parent doesn't want to hear that their child is not measuring up. I know that my job is to make the best possible package out of children's future. It is my job. I am a teacher. A flummoxed, somewhat chagrined teacher, but a teacher, nonetheless.

Truth or Daredevil

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
My wife made the correct assertion when she heard that Evel Knievel had died. She said that she hoped that he hadn't succumbed to some boring or pedestrian cause. He should have gone out in a shower of sparks and a roar of thundering engines. He should have gone out with a bang. Sure, he had settled his account with Kanye West, and that got him a nice piece of press. He survived hepatitis with a liver transplant, but hurling himself across vast distances at high speeds into asphalt and hay bales didn't kill him.
The family across the street were big boxing fans. They always had a crowd in to watch Muhammad Ali maintain his heavyweight championship. Back in our basement, we had ABC's Wide World of Sports tuned in to the next big jump that Evel had planned for us.
He was a man who looked a little like Kenny Stabler, dressed like Elvis, and talked like a drunken sailor. George Hamilton did a nice job of softening his image a little in 1971, and six years later, he Evel co-starred himself with none other than Gene Kelly in what would be the beginning and end of his action film career: "Viva Knievel." Just three years ago the legend was reborn, directed by John Badham and starring George Eads. Almost thirty years since his last stunt, and even though it was a TV-movie, there was still something that brought us back to watch.
I never was much of a daredevil myself. I rode a motorcycle, and the one or two times that I tried anything dangerous, I ended up getting hurt. But never hospital hurt. Not broken bones hurt. Never life-threatening hurt. I left that for Evel.
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Zombies

The zombies were clawing at the door of the bathroom this morning. My wife called out in terror (or was it resignation?), "Don't you have anything better to do?"
The zombie went down his List Of Things To Do:

1. Shamble about
2. Scratch frantically at locked doors
3. Moan
4. Eat human flesh

"Nope," replied the zombie, and he went back to scratching frantically at the locked door. And so another day begins in the Caven household.

Sometimes what amounts to human closeness is protracted silliness. The public displays of affection sometimes appear in the most ridiculous ways. I know that I bring this from my childhood, where my mother's three sons would express their love for her by lightly patting her on the head and saying, "Bonka, bonka." These kind of things have shown up for years and have alternated between sincerity and abuse, and I'm more than certain that any clinical psychologist would have a field day with the oddly demonstrative aspects of all of our relationships.

But we are not all emotionally retarded. When we kiss and hug, we mean it, and we laugh until we cry more than we cry at all. It's just an awful good thing to know what to do when the zombies show up.

The Best Laid Plans

Ever have one of those days? The kind of day that starts out with so much promise, but ends up being a nightmare of loose ends and unfulfilled expectations? I did. I do on a semi-regular basis. It is part of the nature of my profession. I have come to accept it, but it doesn't make it any smoother going down.
I was happy this morning to find my son awake at roughly the same time as I was, and he spent some time warming himself on the heating vent as I took my shower. It was a stolen moment of connection that most school days do not afford me. There were no ugly surprises awaiting me on my ride to work, and I had a pleasant guy-sports-moment on the way in with a couple of my fellow teachers. I felt rested and ready to take on the last day of the week.
I also felt confident that the looming report card conferences with the parents of my students would keep them on a more even keel for the day. Besides, it was going to be a day full of quiet test-taking culminating in a quick tie-up of loose ends before heading out for a little kickball in the brisk November afternoon.
We never made it out to kickball. The anticipation of report cards seemed to make them more antagonistic and unfocused. We limped on through to the end of the day with all of our "must-do's" completed, but the "may-do's" went untouched. That's when the fun really started.
I had made an appointment with the father of my biggest challenge to connect with him about his report card. The earliest he said he could come was after five thirty, so I set myself to work preparing for the next week. I filled about an hour before I heard the third grade teachers in the hallway, so I stepped out to see what the commotion was.
One of them had her purse stolen from her classroom. She had only walked out for a moment to go across the hall to use the bathroom. When she came back, the purse was gone. With her wallet. With her cell phone. With her keys. She became another one of those too-trusting souls who never would have imagined that someone would steal from an elementary school teacher. And so I spent the better part of the next hour trying to piece the puzzle together. Ironically, the finger initially pointed squarely in the direction of my biggest challenge. He was the one who had been lurking around after school, poking his head into my room long after all my other students had gone home.
The assistant principal and I drove up to their house and met up with the kid and his older brother, and it was pretty clear that they hadn't been involved, mostly since they didn't bother to rat one another out, as they are accustomed. As it turned out, their father was home at the time, and I asked if he wouldn't mind coming down to do the conference sooner rather than later. There was some discussion about mother being in the hospital, and that's when the aunt offered to walk down with the boys instead.
I waited at the school until six o'clock. When I called the house to see if anyone was coming down, they were still trying to get their collective ducks in a row for the rush visit to the hospital. The aunt was suddenly unavailable as well. I wished that I had just carried the report card with me and thrust it through the open door when I had the chance. Instead, I rescheduled for Monday evening.
I'm home now, and I can take off my teacher hat for a day or two. I know that it will start right up again bright and early, so I'm hoping to get some rest. I'm going out tonight with my son to get a cheeseburger. That should go down nice and smooth.

One Man's Ceiling

I was fortunate most of my life to live on the top floor. While it is true that I spent a good deal of time in the basement of my parents' house, when I reflect back on the years I lived there, I think first of the corner bedroom that was first "my room". I learned to recognize most of the Beatles' songs by their bass lines after listening to them coming up through the floor when my brother played them on his stereo downstairs. When I took over his room, I learned to revel in the privacy, but was always acutely aware of exactly what was taking place above me: the dog jumping off the couch, the water running in the bathroom, my father walking to the kitchen. The world played out over my head, and I sometimes wished that I could move back upstairs.
I know that there are plenty of people who would shop for apartments that put them in a particular position. There are those who prefer to be close to the parking lot. Some prefer to be away from the stairs. Still others like to have a southern exposure. I was not one of those people. I took the apartment that was open, and moved in my stuff. It is only upon recent reflection that I have discovered this trend of upper floors.
In hindsight, I'm sure that I was generally a pretty good neighbor. The obvious exception to this rule would have been the somewhat regular occurrence of late-night debauchery in my college days, and in the years following my eventual graduation. Celebrating Bruce Springsteen's birthday with a keg on our porch in the middle of a work week seems like a bad idea now, but back then it was de rigeur. We made the lady downstairs cry. We used to tell people who threatened to call the cops on our loud parties that they wouldn't have to call loud, since on any given night there might be a few of them sitting on our couch, drinking beer or dodging flying darts. Maybe we weren't such terrific neighbors after all.
Maybe that's why I was mortified to discover that years after I quit drinking, I was still managing to upset the delicate balance of apartment dwelling. One morning as I was preparing to head out to work, I discovered a note that had been pushed under my door. It read, "I just thought you should know that I had to listen to every word of your phone conversation last night." I knew immediately what had happened. My trusty Spider-phone was in my bedroom, next to the wall, and I had been up late the night before having one of my late-night time zone bending chats. As I have confessed here previously, I was not blessed with what anyone would consider "an inside voice", hence the terse words from the lady next door. I spent the day ruminating on the things that I might say in apology or defense. I thought about all the things that I might do to make things better, or worse. In the end, I did nothing, with the possible exception of feeling extremely self-conscious every time my phone rang.
These days I wake up any time my son snuffles in his room, or my dog chases rabbits in her sleep. I hear the cars go boom as they roll down our urban street, and the sirens remind me of where I live. But upstairs is an empty attic, and downstairs the laundry room is quiet at night. When I do drift off, I'm glad to be back on top.

Go Ghoti

If Steven's mother had come up to the school this morning and demanded that her son be taken out and put in a place where he wouldn't be bullied and threatened, I would have handed her the appropriate forms and helped her with the process. I could not imagine an uglier scene than I saw today on our playground.
Let me begin again: I was in the office just before eight o'clock, preparing myself for another day of herding cats, metaphorically speaking, when Steven's little brother and sister ran in and told me that, "the boys are beating on Steven!" Past experience has informed my reactions, and so I hustled outside to see exactly what was going on. Sure enough, there was a mob of boys (if any number higher than ten can be considered a mob) chasing Steven across the yard. From a distance, it looked like it might have been a game of tag or keep away, but since there was no ball in sight and all the attention seemed to be focused on one kid, instead of one kid chasing a group, I moved to cut off the main pursuit.
When I yelled from across the yard with my best teacher voice, some of the less intense kids fell away, but it wasn't until I got between Steven and the gang of a dozen or so boys chasing him that the mob pulled up. I picked out the ones I recognized immediately as mine, and then started picking out the ringleaders. By this point, Steven was growling and snarling and was not listening to anyone. He ran away. I chose to stick with the mob.
Once the details began to filter through, one of my students had been pushed into fighting Steven, and when he turned out to be capable of defending himself against one, the instigators rallied the tiny brains and they set on him as a group. They jumped on his back. They pushed him. They kicked him. They beat on him.
Why? Part of me wishes for some practical explanation: the hyenas going after the wounded gazelle. Part of me wants some measure of frontier justice, where the idiot that shoved my student into the fight in the first place should have a chance to go mano a mano with Steven without all his minions around. Mostly I just wish it never would have happened. What happened to Steven was uncomfortably close to moments in my own childhood. For the first time in thirty years, I remembered a film I loved from The Children's Film Festival on CBS. It was called "Skinny and Fatty", and I spent many lonely afternoons recalling the swarms of elementary school bullies who made my life so much like a movie that I wanted to cry.
And that's how I felt this morning, but I remembered a moment from yesterday: Steven was answering a comprehension question in our after school tutoring program about fish. When I leaned over his shoulder to look at what he was writing, I saw "We have to clean ghoti before we eat them." I started to correct him, but then I realized that he had remembered the anecdotal lesson about the challenges in learning English. "Enough" gives us "gh" as "f", "women" gives is "o" as short "i", and "motion" gives us "ti" for "sh". That's why we spell "fish" g-h-o-t-i. Steven remembered. When I think about that, it makes some of the bad stuff from this morning go away. But not all of it.

Making Sense

Doctor J. Robert Cade, who invented the sports drink Gatorade and launched a multi billion-dollar industry that the beverage continues to dominate, died Tuesday of kidney failure. He was eighty years old. The Washington Redskins' Sean Taylor died Tuesday after he was gunned down during a home invasion on Sunday night. Sean Taylor was not eighty. He was twenty-four.
Cade's researchers had determined a football player could lose as much as eighteen pounds, ninety to ninety-five percent of it water, during the three hours it takes to play a game. Lieutenant Nancy Perez with the Miami-Dade Police Department said investigators were looking for an "unknown suspect" for the murder of the Redskin's safety.
Doctor Cade had it easy. He was looking for a scientific solution to a physical problem. The Miami-Dade Police will probably find a suspect, but after the initial motive of "robbery" is used up, then there's still not a lot of sense left in it. The coincidence of these men dying on the same day is purely a construct of time. The fact that they are both connected to the sport of American football is additional kismet. Cade was a man of science, who worked until he was seventy-six before retiring from the University of Florida in 2004. Taylor was retired against his will. It would all make much more cosmic sense if Sean Taylor had played his college ball at the University of Florida. Instead he played down south at Miami, and was a high school star in Orlando. Somehow, any further connection might have strained credulity. It would have made as much sense as the violent deaths of all the other young men this past year. Gatorade replaces electrolytes. That makes sense.

Knew Math

This was the second morning in a row that I woke up feeling just a little frustrated. The problem was that I have been trying to figure out how to make something good out of the meeting that I have to attend today. Let me preface: I, along with the students in my class, have been off for the past week on an extended Thanksgiving holiday. One of the last things that we did as a class was to take a math test. Sixty-four per cent of my students did not pass this test. This morning's meeting is being held to discuss the progress of our new math program. While I have many adjectives to describe our progress, I am also acutely aware of one of the main challenges that my students face. I know that at the end of the three hours that I am at this district confab that there is every likelihood that I will return to my classroom to find elevated levels of stress on the part of my kids and/or the substitute left in charge.
My worry is based on sound data. It is the data that this math program has provided me, and the most interesting bit of irony in this interaction is that the fourth grade teachers will not return to their school sites until after the math lesson has begun. How am I to affect change if I am not in my classroom? On the morning after a week-long vacation? On the morning after a trimester test?
A lot of people, colleagues and well-meaning friends, have told me that I should embrace those moments when I am released from my daily grind. Cherish those jury summons as a reminder of all the things that live outside the walls of the school, they tell me. Take a sick day, they admonish me. Take a mental health day, they warn. They are right, of course, and I have tried to take some mild satisfaction out of sitting in a conference room this morning instead of rushing back to the same old place I rushed out of a week ago Friday.
But that's where my mind will be. That's where there is still work to be done.

On The Level

I'm feeling a little woozy still. It may be the fact that I ran my once-yearly ten kilometer race, and my muscles are not as young and springy as they used to be. It may be that I have had a week's vacation with house guests in and out and lots of extra food and late nights. Whatever the reason, whatever the excuse, I am certain that part of the answer can be traced to my trip to The Mystery Spot yesterday afternoon.
What is The Mystery Spot? My first inclination is to suggest that any explanation or description would sound ridiculous and fantastical without any hard evidence to back it up. All I know for certain is that four grown-ups and a ten-year-old spent the majority of the past twenty-four hours trying to explain all the things we saw and experienced there. Gravity is askew there. Objects shrink and grow without explanation. Okay, there are lots of explanations, but none can account for the fact that my son's compass began to twist wildly as he walked up the hill toward the Spot. Redwood trees with limbs that grow on only one side, eucalyptus trees that lean at disconcerting angles away from the Spot. These are just some of the disconcerting observations we made as we wandered around this gravitational anomaly.
It could be that the light-headed sensation that I had this afternoon came as a result of running six-plus miles before having a proper breakfast, but I would like to think that it should remain more mysterious, or as Oscar Wilde put it, “The final mystery is oneself.”

Aloha, Bill!

The holidays are upon us, and I can't help but feeling there is a little Dickens in this story, but maybe that's only because I spent three hours stringing Christmas lights in my front yard yesterday. That and celebrating a 65 to 51 beatdown of the hated Nebraska Cornhuskers by my alma mater, the University of Colorado Buffaloes. Today, Bill Callahan becomes the ex-coach of Nebraska. "As a former coach this is a role I really don't like. I hate to sit in judgment of other people. I never envisioned being in a situation where I would have to make a decision on somebody's employment opportunity, but that's the nature of this business." These were the words of former Cornhusker Coach, interim Athletic Director, and semi-major Nebraskan demigod Tom Osborne said at a news conference dismissing Coach Callahan. This was also coming from the man who won 255 games and three national championships in 25 seasons before retiring after the 1997 season. He retired. He was not retired.
Now I have some time to work up some sympathy for Bill. Even though he has been the coach of two of the great Satans in my sports world view, Nebraska and the Oakland Raiders, I can't help but feel bad when anybody loses a job in America. It reminds me of an old Bobcat Goldthwait bit: "I lost my job. Well, I know where my job is. It's just that when I get there, some other guy is doin' it." And that's the nature of the coaching biz, I suppose. But that doesn't keep me from feeling just a twinge of sadness as the Callahan era comes to a close. Just a twinge, mind you, since that decision will cost the University of Nebraska more than three million dollars to buy up his contract. Maybe things will work out after all. Maybe Bill can get a job coaching another dreaded red and white team, the Fairview High Knights.

Gobbled Up

There is a tradition as American as spilling just a dab of cranberry sauce on your mother's special white table cloth. I am referencing the annual Thanksgiving pardon of a turkey by the President of the United States. This year, according to most historians, celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of this fowl tradition. President Pinhead kept the string alive this week when May and her alternate Flower were spared at a photo opportunity on Tuesday. "May they live the rest of their lives in blissful gobbling. And may all Americans enjoy a holiday full of love and peace. God bless you all."
It's the love and peace part that sticks with me. As the leader of the last remaining super power, it makes me wonder how he can offer up such blithe commentary as he continues to wage war half a world away. May and Flower will be flown to Disney World, where guests will be able to visit these pardoned celebrities in the back yard of Mickey's country house.
For the record, Pinhead has pardoned one hundred and thirteen people during his stay in the White House. He has pardoned fourteen turkeys. The people have not been invited to Disney World. We hope they continue to live the rest their lives in blissful gobbling. That is if they can be heard of the seemingly endless gibberish spewing from the Pinhead in charge.

Grateful

Danny Elfman once asked the musical question, "Now is that gratitude?" This is the thought that has been rolling around my head ever since I woke up this morning and my wife asked me, "What are you thankful for?" I winced and pulled the covers back over my head and mumbled something about being thankful for the fact that I don't have to wake up every morning with some platitude of thanks.
And then we had a little conversation about the nature of thanks. She suggested that saying thanks was the expression of happiness running over. Once you're stuffed full of happy, you're bound to burst if you don't tell someone how thankful you are. Otherwise, I suppose, one might just explode. And that wouldn't be so happy.
So I spent some time reflecting on what I was thankful for, and I started a thesaurus exercise that put me at gratitude. I believe that gratitude is a little different than thanks. Gratitude stems from relief, rather than pure joy. I am grateful for dinnertime, but I am thankful when it is pork chops glazed with orange juice and brown sugar. I am grateful for Bruce Springsteen, but I am thankful for "Cadillac Ranch". I am grateful for recess, but I am thankful for vacation. Gratitude comes from the Latin gratis, meaning "free". Thanks comes from Proto-Indo-European "tong-" to think, feel. It's that intersection between thinking and feeling that makes us say "thank you". I'm grateful on most any given day, but today I am full of thanks.

Degeneres To A Fault

Happily, I've been kept very busy for the past few days with my mother's visit, and I have yet to plop down on the couch for some good old-fashioned TV time. It is precisely times like these that make me recall the marquee I saw in front of a Hooters in Boulder so many years ago. It read: Hard Choice - Go To Work Or Daytime TV. You might expect that in the intervening years with the advent of digital on demand high definition cable television that the choices would have evolved to such a point that a day or two of comfortable entertainment could be eked out while waiting for the working week to return in all its glory.
Not so. There is still a lot of barely watchable programming out there, and I will not be the one who stands, or sits, by and watches it unfold. Most of this is based solely on my limited attention span, but some of it comes from a sense of mild outrage with Ellen Degeneres. Ellen, who had to take a day off a month ago to cope with her feelings about her adopted dog who she gave up to her hairdresser and was subsequently taken back by the rescue organization that had a contract with Ms. Degeneres - Ooops! Did I say "contract"? That's exactly the reason that she uses for continuing to show up and produce her show, in spite of the fact that she is a Writers Guild member, who are currently on strike. Her representatives say, "Ellen is competing with other first-run syndicated shows that are delivering original programming like Dr. Phil, Regis and Kelly and Oprah during the competitive November sweeps period." None of these individuals, by the way, belong to the WGA except for Ms. Degeneres.
I understand that as work actions go, I'm no Jimmy Hoffa, but when a millionaire chooses not to make a stand for her fellow union members, then it makes me glad that I have something else to do besides watching her show. What time does "Judge Judy" start?

Shining Moment

Somewhere in the first quarter of last night's Bronco game, I looked across the room and noticed that my mother, visiting me here from Colorado, was staring at the TV with her legs crossed and her arms folded tightly against her chest. I noticed this because it was the precise posture I found my own body in as I watched our team start out on Monday Night Football. It has been several years since my mother and I have shared this experience in the same room. I often call her after a game, or when things are going very well, or very poorly. We commiserate and rationalize, and remember when things were different.
But last night, we remembered how much the same things are. I remembered how much fun it is to root for a team with a room full of people who care as much as you do. Or at least, they pretend to. There was another four orange and blue clad Bronco Buds in the room for the second half, and try as they might to be ambivalent, when Andre Hall ran sixty-two yards to the end zone to put Denver ahead comfortably and for good there was a lot of whooping that did not emanate from my mother or myself. It was a giddy good time.
My wife got to have a themed party. My niece got to wear a John Elway jersey. My younger brother spent what could be considered quality time with his family and had some delicious pizza. Was it the Super Bowl? No, but my mother and I finally relaxed and enjoyed the events unfolding half a continent away, and it was good.