Legacy

The thing that struck me first was the fact that my family and I arrived together just before seven, bought our tickets and went inside. We had never bought tickets for the Sequoia Variety Show. Over the past half-dozen years, we had sold our share of tickets, but we had never purchased any. This was primarily due to the fact that we were, some or all of us, part of that show.
But not last night. We were part of the audience. The next thing I was aware of was how full the auditorium was. For all those years before, I just assumed that the chairs I had set up hours earlier were full with excited onlookers: paying customers. Now I was out there in the dark, standing at the back because it was the only room available.
That's where I watched the show, just to one side of the follow spot that was perched on a table behind me. My wife and son found places to sit, and friends to talk with. I kibitzed with other dads who I had worked with "back in the day." But mostly I watched the show and noticed how much the same it was, and how very different.
It is a variety show, and the Kindergarten girl who sang a flawless acappella version of Elton John's "Your Song" contrasted mightily with the breathless fourth grade girl doing her best Beyonce. This year there were two "air bands," but unlike my son's groups, these featured live vocals. There was a raffle, but this year the prizes were donated movie tickets and gift certificates, a far cry from our fifty dollar cash giveaways.
Standing at the back, I was acutely aware of a phenomenon I had only guessed at in years past: The crowd thinned mightily just after the prizes had been handed out and just before the Dads' Club Act at the end of the show. Watching the parents stomp about onstage in their hastily prepared and roughly rehearsed skit, I remembered years past when I struggled to get line readings and cues caught from a bunch of guys who were already doing valiant service putting on a show from behind the scenes. Now I was asking them to be thespians.
It was a beautiful thing because it was something new, but immediately recognizable. When the lights came up, I shook some hands and congratulated everyone on a job well done as we folded and stacked chairs. And this thought came to me: It's like that first time you go back to your old school after you move on to junior high. You see your old teacher, and there are a whole crop of new kids in your class, and you wonder how you were ever small enough to fit in those desks. Last night I wondered how I ever managed to do that for six years. The answer was simple: I had a lot of help. Not just the men and women and boys and girls who were there at the time, but the ones who came before me.
As winter turns to spring, I look back fondly on the months of preparation and the weeks of rehearsal and the night of the show and then it's over. I miss that seasonal rhythm, but I'm happy now to be just an observer. In the back. In the dark. Applauding.

Rule Number One

"The first rule of Fight Club," Tyler Durden reminds us, "Is nobody is supposed to talk about Fight Club." Somebody should have told the folks at South Oak Cliff High in Dallas about Rule Number One.
Allegations were made Thursday that staff members at the inner-city high school made students settle their differences by fighting bare-knuckle brawls inside a steel cage. In the report, a teacher was quoted as saying Principal Donald Moten told security personnel to put two fighting students "in the cage and let `em duke it out." The cage in question was an equipment locker in the boys' locker room.
Here's where it gets interesting to me: The charges came to light during a grade-fixing investigation that eventually cost the high school its 2005 and 2006 state basketball titles. School officials were suspected of altering students' grades so that they could remain eligible to play. The fights in question took place between 2003 and 2005. Would an investigation have occurred if there had been no grade-fixing?
As a regular apologist for public schools, I'm at a loss for an excuse. Am I pleased and happy that the discussions that take place over lunch in our staff room aren't recorded or monitored in some other way? You bet I am. Many times I have made suggestions alluding to "Lord of the Flies" or "Thunderdome" to break the tension of an otherwise stressful day. Gallows humor, but humor just the same. Because when kids are truly in danger, even from one another, it's my job to keep them safe. Because that's the first rule of Teacher Club.

Find Yourself Here

I grew up in "Colorful Colorado." I know this primarily because I read a lot of license plates in my youth. In the seventies, there was a great move afoot to insert "Rocky Mountain High" into that mix, but it never quite caught on. A very good friend of mine came from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and I always felt the need to remind him of his state's adequacy: "Oklahoma is OK." Not great, not terrific, I would remind him. Just "OK."
Over time, state slogans can change. The friendly folks in New Jersey decided to change theirs from "New Jersey and You: Perfect Together" to "Come See For Yourself" in 2006. There was a move afoot in 1980 to make "Born To Run" the state song, but a closer look at the lyrics (It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap) kept it "unofficial." The legacy of "I'm From New Jersey" continues.
I'm sure no one really considered the irony of Texas' slogan, "It's Like a Whole Other Country," until the past eight years. Ohio and North Carolina continue to bicker about who is "First in Flight" and who is the "Birthplace of Aviation," but at least they don't have the braggadocio of Delaware's "It's Good Being First."
And now there's Wisconsin. For so long we have known them as "America's Dairyland." It worked well with that whole "cheese-head" image. Well, not anymore. "Live like you mean it" will take the place of the previous official slogan, "Life's so good." Not a bad change, but it does sound a little more like a threat. Kind of like the motto of New Hampshire: "Live free or die." Not a lot of choice there, but it's good to have options. The other problem with the new vision for Wisconsin is there are at least five trademarks covering the term's use for promoting real estate, dietary supplements, and even Bacardi rum. Then there's the overlap with the self-help industry. "Live like you mean it" has such an empowering feel to it, why limit it to just one state? If it doesn't stick, I suggest they try to work something out with Springsteen for "Cadillac Ranch."

Jester

NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker got himself into the fray with comedian Jon Stewart on Wednesday, saying it was "unfair" and "absurd" for the comedian to criticize CNBC and question its coverage of financial news. Mister Zucker's assertion was that his network was not responsible for "what is going on now." Is CNBC responsible for the collapse of our country's economy? No, they are not. But that is not what Jon Stewart and many of the rest of us are irate about.
Ironically enough, Fox News saw fit to air the public and rather embarrassing dressing down of Jim Cramer as a point for the conservatives. TV funnyman criticizing a competing network is good fodder for them, but they insist it would have been better if Stewart would have taken Chris Dodd or Barney Frank to task in the same manner. Frankly, I'm not sure why Cramer showed up, hat in hand, to take his lumps in the first place, but I am sure that if anything like that was in the wind for a politician like Dodd or Frank they would duck and run.
In some ways, Jim Cramer did us all a big service. His appearance on "The Daily Show" last week served as a lightning rod for the ire that is brewing among holders of 401Ks. Jon Stewart never suggested that anyone at CNBC was responsible for bad finances, he said that they were guilty of bad reporting. If they knew that the house was on fire, it was their job to report it, not to encourage everyone to redecorate.
I have long held that what happens in the stock market is made up, and I try to distance myself from the daily surges and upheavals of trading and exchanges. I am focused on doing my job, and I rely on the skill and cleverness of people I trust to manipulate my money in ways that keep it safe and will allow me to live out my days in front of a TV, shouting out answers to Final Jeopardy. No, Mister Zucker, it is not absurd that your star and your network was singled out for ridicule. Jim Cramer had enough shame to admit as much. What is absurd is that it took a guy who, by his own admission, "makes a lot of fart jokes" to point it out. Just be glad it wasn't Carrot Top.

Insenstive Incentives

When I got my first salaried position I felt as though I had been cheated. I am the type of person who shows up early and stays late as a matter of course, and when I used to punch a time clock, I used to end up with a few extra bucks in my paycheck along with the everlasting praise and appreciation of my employers. When I found myself in management, I kept putting in those extra hours as a matter of course. This is what I expect from my employees, after all.
Then I became a teacher and one thing became apparent from the very first day: There was no "quittin' time." Sure, there were plenty of mornings that I arrived just before the custodian unlocked the school, and just as many evenings when I was politely urged toward the door so it could be locked behind me. And there was still work to do. I brought it home. I did it on the weekends. I did it after dinner. I did it after my son went to bed. I have learned, over the course of my career, to set limits that allow me to get things done without doing me in.
Barack Obama wants to create a system of merit pay for teachers. I'm thinking that installing a time clock might be a good first step. But that's not the whole picture. The other thing I left behind when I became a teacher was the idea of bonuses. Just about every job I had before I was a teacher brought me a little something extra right around Christmas. Depending on the job and the times, it was usually just a little monetary pat on the fanny for a job well done. Something in the envelope to go along with the cheesy card.
My President wants to keep AIG from handing its executives one hundred sixty-five million dollars in bonuses after taking billions in federal bailout money. "This isn't just a matter of dollars and cents. It's about our fundamental values," he said. I'm guessing that one hundred and sixty-five million dollars would go a long way to improving test scores in the Oakland Unified School District. In case anyone's asking.

Madoff With The Money

Raise your hand if you knew what a Ponzi scheme was before last year. If you think it's when you conspire with your friends to show off how cool you are by jumping on water skis over a shark in a tank, then put your hand down. If you answered "pyramid scheme," go ahead and pat yourself on the back and let us continue. If you knew that it was named for the infamous swindler, Charles Ponzi, feel free to skip to the end. It's not the same as selling Amway, at least Amway gives you all that great soap in the end. If you believe that you're going to make a ton of money in "hedge futures trading", "high-yield investment programs", or "offshore investments," chances are pretty good that you've been Ponzied.
What sort of people fall for this "get rich quick" scam? How about writer, professor, political activist, and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel? Wouldn't you guess a man of his intellect would be able to smell a rat? “I remember that it was a myth that he created around him,” Mr. Wiesel said, “that everything was so special, so unique, that it had to be secret. It was like a mystical mythology that nobody could understand.” The "he" is in reference to imprisoned con man Bernie Madoff, and Mr. Wiesel was not the only victim. In order to make the manipulator of imagined wealth truly wealthy, it takes thousands of victims.
And this is when I thought of Tatum O'Neal. Tatum has had her own share of dust-ups with the law, but most of her bad investments have been limited to crack cocaine. No, the reason for me to remember the youngest winner of an Academy Award was the role that made her famous: Addie Pray. As young Addie begins to uncover the truth about her father the confidence man, they have this exchange:

Moses Pray: I got scruples too, you know. You know what that is? Scruples?
Addie Pray: No, I don't know what it is, but if you got 'em, it's a sure bet they belong to somebody else!

If the money in question belongs to somebody else, then it isn't yours. We've become used to thinking that some people deserve to be swindled. A fool and his money are soon parted, after all. But it's never the case when it's our money.
"I wish it grew on trees, but it takes hard work to make money." - Jim Cramer

Supply And Demand

A few nights ago, my son and I were sitting on the couch watching TV. It was a rerun of "The Simpsons" that we had both seen more than once. That didn't keep us from enjoying it, each in our own ways, and with plenty of overlapping bits that we laughed at together. During a commercial, our thoughts turned to snacks. "It's a shame we didn't get any Girl Scout cookies when we saw them out in front of the grocery store," I said.
"Mmmm," replied my son, channeling his best Homer Simpson.
"What I wouldn't give for a box of Thin Mints right now."
"Mmmm, Thin Mints."
"We should have bought a case right then."
"Yeah," he said, still a little glazed, "but Samoas are good too."
This is when the conversation stopped. I didn't know how to continue. Sitting next to me, my own flesh and blood, was a child I no longer understood. Samoas? The uncomfortable silence was broken when he assured me, "I still like Thin Mints."
Some measure of trust restored, and the commercial over, we returned to the relative sanctuary of Springfield. We watched in relative silence, broken by the occasional snicker or guffaw. My son will be twelve in a couple of months. I know that this kind of interaction will be coming our way more often over the next few years.
Today, my son went out bowling with his friends. I stuck around the neighborhood, and stopped by the grocery store where the Girl Scouts were out once again. They were out of Thin Mints, so I bought a box of Samoas.