Wednesday, October 24, 2012

An Interesting Notion

Albeit Unsettling

Here is another idea that I ripped off from something I read yesterday:  Most of the successes of two term presidents is the result of the unpopular initiatives of one term presidents.

I know this sounds like I am conceding the upcoming election to Romney.  I'm not.  I still think Obama will eke out a victory, although it looks increasingly possible that that victory will be decided in the electoral morass that Colorado's idiot and partisan Secretary of State has created.  I don't know if we Coloradans should be proud or ashamed to be the next Florida.

Anyway, back to the interesting idea.  Jimmy Carter was a one term president because he made the fatal mistake of suggesting that we cut back, be more austere, conserve resources.  These are not popular positions today.  In the late 70's they were anathema.  The hostage crisis didn't help his reelection chances, but he would have lost in any event.  Ronald Reagan swept in and got the adoration of conservatives everywhere for rolling back regulations and overseeing a short lived economic boom that quickly turned to unmanageable deficit and scandal (Iran-Contra) by the time his 8 years were mercifully up.  But the deregulation and the booming economy were the results of policies started by Carter.  Carter was the first to start deregulating (Airlines) on a systematic scale.  The economy rebounded under Reagan because of the fiscal good sense instituted by Carter.  Carter was vilified for the very things he did to make Reagan such a success.

The same thing is true of Bush I.  He had to clean up the mess Reagan left him, the same job Carter had following Nixon/Ford.  To his credit he realized his "No New Taxes" pledge was impossible to keep unless he was willing to usher in a major recession, so he raised taxes.  He also conducted a prudent campaign in Iran, without over reaching like his son would do a decade later.  I'm not sure what I think about the "war" in Iran, but I am convinced that Bush's tax increase was a major contributor to the unprecedented growth of the Clinton years.  Bush was voted out of office for doing exactly the right thing (when it came to taxes).  And like Reagan before him, Clinton squandered away that strong start by over reaching and not just in the personal realm.

The same thing could potentially happen again.  Romney and Ryan say they will create 12 million new jobs during their reign.  EVERY "expert" says the economy will grow 12 million jobs in that time no matter who the president is.

Presidents, it turns out, are like the rest of us.  Little people swept up in the tide of great big events.

I've got to close this now.  I'm on my way down to City Park for Obama's rally.  It's gonna make all the difference.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Miscellany

Here is a bunch of stuff highlighting the difficulty of remaining sane.

I

This month was The Atlantic's special report on education issue.  Usually I make a point of ignoring anything having to do with education, but an article on pg. 96 entitled "The Writing Revolution" got the better of me.

This is an article that suggests the teaching of expository essay writing improves student performance in all areas.  This is the reason why I avoid education articles, but I kept reading.  It seems the principal at New Dorp High School on Staten Island, when confronted by study after study showing the effectiveness of writing instruction, decided to make essay writing in EVERY CLASS except math the focus of the school.  Non-English teachers freaked.  There were already doing a bang up job, they insisted, all evidence to the contrary.  The problem with New Dorp students (other than the name of the school itself) was that they just weren't bright enough to do the kind of writing the principal wanted.  Regular English teachers freaked as well because ever since the 90's writing "instruction" revolved around things like first person memoirs, short pieces of fiction, and peer editing.  That fluffy approach, conventional knowledge said, was the way to get students to invest in their education.

The New Dorp experience exposes that warm and fuzzy approach for the chimera it is.  Since instituting a new approach through the teaching of grammar, sentence structure, and expository writing, test scores have shot up, the number of kids eligible for college admission has more than doubled.  Life is good.

Well, hello!  Kathie and I could have told you that would have been the result.  Toward the end of our career, some of the newer and younger teachers in our department started rebelling against the kind of formulaic writing we championed.  The newer teachers (Todd Reynolds, he of the red hair, homunculus physique, and asshole personality, comes immediately to mind) thought that controlling statements were works of the devil, squelching poor kids' creative instincts.  They thought giving kids explicit instruction on things like transitions, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, five paragraph essays, and the like were all stupid wastes of time.  Instead, we should allow kids the freedom to explore their talents and gifts and interests.  Hey, I'm as much for following creative instincts and interests as the next guy, but I also know that one must start with a formula for beginning writers.  Of course, there are exceptions.  I had plenty of them and guess what, they all grew in spite of my squelching of their instincts.  If a kid really can write and think and read, no amount of teacher bumbling is going to get in the way, but those kids in the sophomore year are few and far between.

Anyway,  teachers at New Dorp are doing exactly what Kathie and I and Janet and Sue and Peter and all the rest did all those years ago.  They are teaching grammar.  They are teaching coordination and subordination.  They are counting paragraphs.  Mostly, they are making kids write till their arms fall  off.  That has always been the key. They are doing all those things kids need and they are starting a "revolution" in teaching.

My only problem is, like all teaching "revolutions",  it is just revisiting those old methods that have always worked before some hotshot reformer bound on saving education from moribund teachers like me decided to discredit them.  It makes me crazy.

II

Tom Friedman wrote a great piece in The New York Times yesterday ("Obama's Best-Kept Secrets"). Friedman is at a loss to understand why the President doesn't more vigorously and specifically defend his successes, instead of just warning everybody about how it will be a disaster if Romney wins.  For instance, Romney is getting a lot of traction among women voters by spinning the number of jobs women have lost under Obama and by assuring them he will get jobs for their husbands.  He will also see to it that any woman he hires personally will have a schedule flexible enough for her to rush home and make dinner for her hubby (or partner?, probably not), and help the kids with homework and the like.  I'm sure Romney has never considered the possibility that a husband might make the dinner.  That sounds a lot like European socialism, doesn't it?  Instead of arguing back that Romney will outlaw abortions and make it more difficult and costly to get contraception, why doesn't the President fight back on the economy instead of conceding it.  There is NO evidence that Romney has even a clue about creating jobs.  NONE.

Anyway, Obama's secrets are Race-To-The-Top and raising the mileage standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025.  Romney vows to stop both of these programs.  He offers no reason why except that since they are initiatives by Obama they must be bad.  But they are actually the among the biggest drivers of our (admittedly slow) economic growth.  The fact is there are numbers of jobs out there that are unfilled because we lack the kind of single minded training we need in our schools to fill them.  Race-To-The-Top is designed to ameliorate that and it is being surprisingly successful across the country.  Believe me, it is hard for me to admit that, but the evidence is persuasive.  And the new fuel economy standards, instead of sounding a death knell to the auto industry, have spurred more innovation and jobs based around that innovation.  Engineers are going back to work again.

Romney, a businessman who rejects the value of research and development, would scrap the new standards even as he tries to build his pipeline from Canada.  This guy knows the value of symbols.  Too bad he doesn't understand the value of fact and logic and science.  But the average voter, the ones who will hear Romney speak for maybe the third time, will never be able to sit still for such an argument.  They will either vote for Romney because he is a more accomplished liar, or they will vote for Obama because his family is so beautiful.

III

A study was conducted by The Department of Agriculture in conjunction with Iowa State University and The University of Iowa on crop rotation and the use of chemicals.  Quick background:  the typical farmer in our country uses a two year rotation of crops with corn one year and soybeans the next.  The study wanted to see the effect of longer rotation periods with more crops.  To make a long story short, they discovered that a four year rotation using corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa gave a yield almost twice the size and didn't have to rely on chemicals to keep the crops free of weeds and pests because with the longer rotation the farmers could use the manure their cows were producing as a fertilizer more easily than in a two year rotation (I don't completely understand how, but the guys in the Ag Dept. did).  The labor costs go up, but the money saved on fewer chemicals makes up for it.

The problem is that the results of the test seem to be counter intuitive because they fly in the face of the way things  are CURRENTLY DONE and so major publications are refusing to publish the results.  Also you can bet the Monsanto Corporation would like to see the information suppressed.

It is a lot like killing the electric car campaign waged by the oil companies a few years ago.  More and more this is a country about nothing more than the bottom line.

IV

I'm going to watch football instead of the debate tonight.  I encourage you to join me.  I just can't stand Romney's willingness to pander at any cost and I can't stand Obama's maddening refusal to speak specifically about anything that matters.  And I really can't stand the thought of listening to the punditocracy pontificate about who won, who had the best body language, who was more likable, what the polls REALLY mean.  I've already voted.  I voted for the President.  He is a good man and he is smarter than anybody in the other party.  I don't see how any other vote is possible.  Besides, the Bears are playing tonight and I want to watch Jay Cutler screw up.

By the way, for all those hordes of people reading this, I'm not looking for an argument about this.  I'm sick of arguments.  That's why I listen to MSNBC instead of Fox.  I love to hear from people who agree with me, but as someone in his mid-60's, if someone disagrees with me I don't give a shit.  It's a nice place to be.


Sunday, October 21, 2012

With and Without Boobs


Katherine here.

I hate October.  It's breast cancer month.  I've done breast cancer twice and the most recent round was a mastectomy and the beginning of life sans boobs.

October means cancer and pink everywhere.  People run, walk, play football in pink accessories, eat out, sleep in,  and go on motorcycle cruises to raise money.  People buy all sorts of pink shit to raise money.  This is really good.  This is really important.  This helps prevent cancer and helps people get better.  This is, however, a truly constant reminder that I've been really sick and I could well be really sick again and I'm running out of weapons to battle my sickness because a girl's body can only handle so much surgery and radiation and chemicals and their long range effects.  The mirror is a daily and regular reminder of my survival status.  October just means there is no escaping that definition.

It's the boobless thing on my mind now.  Like most girls, part of my personal history has a booby tale or two.  I was a chesty teenager raised by a Mom so embarrassed by body stuff that menstrual periods were a shock and my introduction to bras was a sack from the Denver Dry Goods with two Playtex bras that showed up on my bed after school one day.  They were white cotton and had a pattern in stitches that looked like a Target with a bullseye at the nipple.  Since Mom wouldn't talk to me about the bras, I had to figure out the straps myself and at age eleven (I had an early start) it was tricky.  Anyway--you get the idea.

Until I went off to college, there was only one small time in high school when I thought I might have a good figure or I might look good in some clothes if I ever got to wear something my mother hadn't made for me.  This is when Mom thought I could be Miss America and found me a sponsor and entered me in the contest without talking to me about my total lack of talent and my horror about the possibility of such a degrading experience.  If Dad hadn't reined her in, I might have had to compete in the pageant with the unique "talent" of changing Mom-made outfits behind a screen while giving a talk about fashion.  The positive I can remember about this is somehow Mom also thought I could make it through the swimsuit competition.

I went from a totally restrictive environment when it came to bodies and what they were capable of to college in the late 60's when bodies became a constant source of discussion.  Clothes changed.  Mom didn't believe in jeans and I never owned a pair until I bought some on my own up in Fort Collins the first week I arrived at CSU.  Mom thought college was still like the June Allyson/Peter Lawford college movies she loved and she sent me off with two piece suits.  Let me tell you that I was the only girl in the dorm with five matching wool suits.  Anyway--I bought jeans and sweaters on the sly.  I still love jeans and sweaters more than any other form of clothing.  The jeans and sweaters didn't really show off my figure anymore than the wool suits did, but I was comfy.  I was too inhibited for showing off what I had so it wasn't a problem.

My favorite college boob memory was at a women's lib rally my freshman year.  It was an infamous bra burning and the hardest part for me was figuring out which of my Playtex numbers I could sacrifice.    The choice made,  I knew there was no way I could publicly remove it and then burn it.  I stuck it in my purse and valiantly burned the stashed bra.  I was always one for making almost statements.

The boobs moved on to leotard type tops and sports bras during most of my teaching and parenting career.  I lived in my jeans and t-shirts and layered up a storm.  I'm guessing that Jim's the only one around who realized I had a nifty chest underneath all the various layers.  These were the mindless boob years.  Boobs for nursing.  Boobs for pleasure.  That's pretty much it.  Boobs for showing hadn't even crossed my mind.

After the kids were out of the house and Jim and I were alone, there was a new boob development.  I'd done the first round of cancer which left me mostly in tact and the radiation effects hadn't begun yet.  I was living in that frame of mind when I believed my body would never start "cancering" again (read THE END OF SICKNESS to understand why I now see the disease as a verb rather than a noun).  This was the last part of my life when I didn't think daily about cancer.  It was nice.

I rarely watched Oprah, but I did one day during that stretch of time and it was about bra fittings and amazingly beautiful bras.  I'd been getting Nike sports bras and tanks at Abercrombie and really hadn't looked at a lingerie department in years.  The Oprah show was cool and it made bra shopping seem like a good time.  I watched all sorts of women in all sorts of shapes put on new bras and they looked a whole lot more like girls after the change.  With my usual whim of iron, I made a bra appointment the next day.

It was awesome.  I went to Nordstrom's and came home with four $80 bras and the sexiest matching panties.  I put sweaters on over the new bras and I got embarrassed.  I was sure somebody was going to think I'd had surgery.  I really had something to flaunt here, but no flaunting experience.  I was almost 50 at this point and it all seemed like a kind of delightful way to battle menopause.  Also, I'd been lucky--all the years in sports bras had kept me from having horrible weiner boobs.  I liked my boobs--even with the bullet-hole in the right one from the lumpectomy.

For about one year I had really nice boob time with pretty underwear and an inner playfulness about my battle against the hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms that appeared.  Then came the second round of cancer.

Each time you have cancer, your choices are fewer and the stats you look at to make decisions are grimmer.  I couldn't do reconstructive surgery because of the radiation treatments during my first cancer battle.  I could remove my lat muscles and wrap them up in balls and attach them to my chest, but my life as an active person would have to change (kayaking and playing tennis require lats).  It would also require a year of my life and three surgeries at best.  I chose to have a mastectomy.

Like most in my position, I did the bra fitting for the prosthetics.  I have two nice bras and two fake boobs collecting dust in my closet.  They are heavy and uncomfortable and they shift around and they just don't feel good physically.  That leaves me as I am and back to tanks from Abercrombie.

I see myself as a Disney cartoon character.  Like Aladdin.  There are no nipples-just some horizontal lines.   Aladdin has more symmetry than I do though.  I have scars and gnars.

I have large parts of my chest and left arm and back that have no sensation.  When Jim lovingly kisses my right shoulder as I cook dinner, I know he is there and doing it, but I don't feel it.  His love of me and my body AS IT IS keeps me afloat and helps me be the girl I am.  Shortly after my surgery a guy at the gym told me he would leave his wife before he'd let her cut her boobs off.  Whatever it is that is me, Jim loves it all and caresses it all and cherishes it all.

My vanity struggles with my situation, but not my soul.  I've learned to dress sans boobs and feel like I look good.  I'm good with distraction and most folks notice the hair, the boots, some odd piece of clothing more than the body that goes with the distractions.  I'm not complaining.  It is good to be alive.

I wrote this because when we saw Chris's production of The Little Shop of Horrors Friday night, the women at the theater were so amazingly well endowed it was almost blinding.  Another result of my boobless state is that I tend to notice boobs wherever I go.  The Parker PACE theater made it impossible to think of much else when the play wasn't happening.  I kept trying to think of the kind of engineering it had taken to keep such masses floating.   It's been a real relief that the rest of the world has looked realistic since that evening.

I'm about to head up to start watching football and there will be football pundits in pink ties and players wearing pink shoes and we will all be aware that breast cancer is a battle that needs fighting.  I support the cause and I contribute to the cause and all of that.  I just want November to come so only my walk from the shower to my closet each morning reminds me that I'm a survivor and not just a girl.






Saturday, October 20, 2012

Little Shop of Horrors

I'm a proud father this morning.  Of course, most mornings I'm a proud father.  I'm lucky that way.  Anyway, Chris of Starkey Productions and now Starkey Theatrix has started producing plays and musicals, something he has always wanted to do, the past couple of years.  He has an exciting arrangement with both PACE (Parker's beautiful arts center) and Lone Tree's large mainstage theater.  It's a gutsy move, but that's what Chris is about.  He commented that this production thing has become his "hobby business."  In other words, he seems to be doing alright, even in the face of Obama's fabricated attack on small business.  But enough politics.

Last night Kathie and I saw the opening performance of Little Shop of Horrors.  It was a great evening.  The former director at Country Dinner Playhouse did the show and the same things that characterized Country Dinner characterized this production.  Surprisingly effective sets that could be changed, thanks to the rotating stage, at the drop of a hat.  A pace that never let up.  Well, it let up some in the second act, but I think all shows do that.  Plus, let's face it, the second act of this show isn't in the same ball park as the first.  The numbers aren't as big.  The key seems to change to something eerier.  Only "Suddenly Seymour" brings the house down.  The first act, even though there isn't a BIG curtain dropper, is filled with one great number after another.  "Skid Row" was so perfect it brought tears to my eyes.  Of course, I cry at particularly effective television commercials.

I've seen lots of theater in my time.  I used to review for CERVI'S JOURNAL in a previous life.  Little Shop at Parker held its own with the best productions in town.  Mostly the nine person cast and the four piece rock band wailing away up on the catwalk filled that huge room with sound.  I thought it was one of the best vocal ensembles I've seen and heard in a long time.

Postpone all further activities and get yourself some tickets to Little Shop of Horrors.  You won't be disappointed and you can have the heady feeling of supporting the arts.

Congratulations Chris.  My heart soars like a hawk.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Equivocation

Anyone who has ever been a teacher or a parent knows all about equivocation.  Kids wouldn't be kids without their well-honed ability to fudge a little with the truth.  And parents wouldn't be parents if their blind love for their children did not make them easy prey to such a rhetorical device.  Teachers are in the same position.

That's what makes this campaign season, the entire political process actually, so frustrating.  Politicians are getting better and better at dealing from the bottom of the truthiness deck.  Checking PolitiFact every day used to be one of my favorite things.  It was reassuring to see a Pants on Fire assigned to a particularly egregious lie, or a big True next to some startling piece of information supporting my position.  But lately everything gets rated Partly False or Partly True or Half True or Half False.  It's like dealing with clever and unscrupulous seniors on a day when an assignment is due.

There are still a few Pants on Fire moments (saying that Obama started his presidency with an apology tour, or suggesting that Romney is somehow responsible for some lady's death by cancer in Ohio), but the candidates are clever enough to avoid them.  The thing is no one (now that Michelle Bachman and Newt Gingrich are out of the race) tells bald faced lies.  They just hedge a little.

Romney let his reliance on the blogosphere for his policy positions get the best of him and he pounced on the President for saying that he proclaimed the tragedy in Libya an act of terror the very next day.  The moderator pointed out (God bless her) that in fact Obama did say precisely that.  This is an important speaking point for Republicans because they are hoping to use the sadness in Libya to suggest that the killing of bin Laden was no big deal and Obama should not get any points for that rather ballsy decision.  So what did they do in reaction to the Great Libya Gaffe?"  They decried the moderator for being partisan.  Evidently, pointing out the truth is a Democratic Party thing.  But this tempest in a teapot is all about equivocation.  Obama did use the word terror the very next day, but if you were into parsing sentences it was unclear if he was referring to Libya specifically.  Four weeks later, after more information became available, Obama was more specific about the whole terror/Libya connection.  You see, they were both right.  Kinda.

Time and time again, every criticism Romney makes of Obama's record, the facts are cherry picked.  Time and time again, every criticism leveled against Romney uses equally cherry picked facts.  If our two candidates, two political parties, two sides of the philosophical schism separating our country can't even agree on the facts, how can they agree on anything?  It is a depressing situation.

I suppose it was ever thus.  I've stood on the spot on the Potomac River where George Washington claims to have thrown a silver dollar across.  Fat chance!  I'll bet he was equivocating just to earn some political points, kind of like Paul Ryan forcing homeless people to stand around and watch him wash clean dishes.  The thing that really happened is that George put a silver dollar in his pocket and had one of his slaves row him to the other side.  When the boat landed, George got out and stood across the river from where he started.  He then tossed the coin to the slave as a kind of tip and in fact ended up throwing a silver dollar across the river.  Of course, this is just a theory.

"Son, did you chop down that cherry tree?  Tell the truth now."

Young George, looking at a stump and next to it a leafy log with no cherries on it, cherries being out of season at the time, said, "well, since there is no tree and there are no cherries, I would have to say that, no I did not chop down a cherry tree."

"Son!  I saw you with the axe.  Aren't those leaves in your hair?"

"Those aren't leaves in my hair.  That's dirt on my shoe.  Are you sure it was me?  What time was it?

"George, I'm getting fed up with your stories.  Next thing you know you're going to tell me about throwing a silver dollar across the river.  I want you to tell the truth, or I'm going to give this property to your half brother."

"I cannot tell a lie.  It was I who chopped down the cherry tree."

No wonder he was such a great president.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Can I Fill In The Bubbles Now, Please?!

It's five o'clock on Saturday morning and I had to run down here because in the kitchen some body language expert--he's written a book--is analyzing the debate from his perspective.  He is being treated by the talk show hosts as if he has something significant to offer to the post-mortem over the debate.

I can't stand it.  Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz and the rest of the crew from MSNBC continue to be downright apoplectic about the whole thing.  It is as if we were all back in the court of King Arthur and Sir Obama was our champion in the joust against the Green Knight!  He didn't eviscerate him.  He didn't even come close.  Which means he let us down and now we're pissed.

Maybe he just realized what we all should realize.  Presidential debates--I've been passionately watching them for over fifty years--are complete and total bullshit.  A media event and nothing more.  I would be disillusioned if I discovered that my president spent the same number of hours in preparation as his opponent.  I would hope he had more pressing business, like hanging out with the girls, or taking Michelle out to a nice dinner.  If it had been me, and my schedulers had put a nationally televised debate on the same day as my 20th anniversary, I would get some new schedulers.  I would also call in sick and hang out with my wife instead of all the fatuous men and women looking to the debate for answers.  Give me a FUCKING break.

What I want more than anything is to get my ballot in the mail so I can bubble in the little squares and mail it back and forget about politics and start concentrating on important things:  the Broncos, crisp fall weather, colorful leaves, writing novels that will never be published.