Crystallized Parenting

Katherine today.

It's December 22nd and it snowed all last night and I don't have to go any place and Franny's in-laws have arrived safely and there is food in the house. Jim has shoveled once and is psyching up for another go at it. As a life long feminist type, I feel odd I've only shoveled the walks several times in my life. I'm okay about it though. It looks pretty cold out there.

Mostly I'm waiting for Franny's baby girl to arrive. I've been thinking about this a long time. Because Franny has moved here, there are some things that are wonderfully immediate about the waiting experience.

I've discovered I'm constantly living on some sort of grandparental precipice. I feel this with Chris and his four kids--the grandkids we already know and love. I have thoughts and bits of advice or tidbits to share with he and Franny now and then and I don't always share what I'm thinking (hard to believe, but true). I also believe there's a lot of stuff you just have to learn on your own and you're best off if you do. Bringing a baby home from a hospital fits here. My purpose here is to catalogue the best parenting tips I can actually verbalize. None of these will cover bringing a baby home from a hospital.

I suppose I should explain how this list is organized. I've been trying to crystallize the things I liked about what Jim and I did as parents for the last several months. We certainly weren't perfect, but I feel good about a lot we've done as parents. Since October, when I could synthesize something into a statement that might actually make sense, I wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it my journal. The order of the following is based solely on the order that I crystallized a thought. I tried to limit my anecdotal comments, but there are still some included with my list of parental tidings. What can I say?

One last thing. These are not new insights and just because I participated in raising three kids, it doesn't make me an expert. It does, however, make me happy that I can look back and have a sense that what Jim and I did accidentally as parents over the course of years seems to have some sort of pattern when seen at a distance.

Crystallized Parenting:

1. Say yes when the request is not dangerous, when it does not upset the family budget beyond reason, when it does not upset family routines beyond reason, and when the request can foster genuine growth.

2. Have dinner together.

3. Have absurd rules. My favorite was for Chris: No tap dancing at the dinner table!

4. Weekly family rituals are good. The Broncos and nachos provided more familial glue than football success when the kids were little.

5. Realize each kid comes with a personality that is pretty much unchangeable. Could be brain chemistry, genes, food allergies, etc--explain it how you will, the personality arrives at birth. Enjoy it, revel in it, and point it in the right direction. Knowing the right direction is the hard part.

6. We chose praise and acceptance over criticism. Our whole family is addicted to praise. I've decided there are worse addictions. Along with praise and acceptance, there must also be some push to go further and do even better somehow.

7. Bedtime rituals are wonderful. Don't rush or skip them. Also good to carry your kids from the car to beds for as long as you possibly can. A hard part of growing up is having to wake up in the car and walk yourself from the backseat to the bedroom.

8. Talk about school every day, but don't talk about grades. Ask what happened in each subject (something always happened with curriculum and strategies to access content). Don't let up until you have detailed answers.

9. Cultivate family restaurant spots. We went to the Lakewood Bar and Grill and the Monterrey House with the boys. The Riviera and Romano's with Franny. I have fun imagining where Franny's family will hang out--Lou's Food Bar? Lola's? Mezcal's? The Brother's Bar? Bones?

10. Enjoy hanging out with other couples who have young kids. Our times with Barb and Michael and learning to be grown-ups with them are treasured times.

11. Find your family stories and rituals and create your family mythology.

12. Moms and Dads should go on dates.

13. Everybody in the family is entitled to secrets.

14. Restaurants are good places to deal with big events in the family. I'll forever remember how Jim and kids kept me together at the North Woods Inn the first time I learned about my cancer. Good news or bad news--you sort of have to behave in public. Also, we can detail the history of our family through the restaurants where news got shared.

15. Activities should come two ways. Expose kids to as much as you possibly can and watch the kids and they'll tell you where they want to go. Once you find a solid direction of interest, increase exposure and instruction and support in that area. Works in the arts, athletics, academics--anything really. Help your kids take risks if they are headed where they want to go.

16. Show up. Part of quality parenting is quantity. Seeing one performance is not as good as seeing two performances. Seeing them all is best. Jim never missed a single softball game and would not have missed a soccer game if the boys hadn't often been playing simultaneously. I've never understood the recent societal belief that quality somehow surpasses quantity. As a teacher and a parent I can tell you that's a crock. A student will write better if he or she writes until his or her arm falls off. One quality assignment here and there won't do it. Guiding your child means seeing your child a lot--even if that child chooses to be in Marching Band (it can happen). Quantity is hard. Really hard. It's important.

17. Hilary Clinton is correct. It takes a village. Let your kids have as many mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and friends as possible. Cultivate people and love them and let them love you.

18. Don't talk baby talk or talk down to your kids at any age.

19. Say "I love you" a lot. Hug a lot.

20. Strive for healthy habits. Enjoy cooking. Eat as fresh and as locally as you can. Avoid processed foods. Exercise in some way. Model healthy habits and don't ask kids to do what you do not.

21. Read in front of the kids and to the kids. When they read on their own, read the same books and talk to them about what they've read. Enjoy reading together.

22. Try not to censure, but to guide. Better to stretch the intellect and realize that it's better to be trained for the loss of innocence than to build a protection system that will never ever work. Just ask Rapunzel or Holden Caulfield. Franny always had to see films beyond her years in all ways because she was surrounded by grown-ups. It paid off--she was the only 4th grader whose favorite films included Shakespeare's Henry V (she named her gerbil Henry) and The Taming of the Shrew (she could hum the theme song while in the tub). We were always there when we took the kids into adult worlds (especially in theater, movies, and books) and that made the difference.

23. Point out happy things. In The Big Chill a character says, "I haven't seen that many happy people. What do they look like?" Jim and I used to have smiling drills in class. It's hard to be happy if you don't know what it looks like. It's part of why I like Tim Tebow. He looks happy. Anyway, remind your family how happy they are during happy times. The world works to make you forget that.

I suspect I'll discover other crystallizations in the future. They can wait. Right now I'm happy to wait for the new baby girl and watch as my daughter becomes an amazing mommy and she'll find the perfect way to harmonize her feminist soul with a beautiful little girl who may want to be a princess and paint her bedroom a truly terrible color of pink.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

Lone Tree Arts Center

I remember driving down to Mesa State years ago to see our son Chris in his first college production, Wind in the Willows. Looking back, I remember the prospect of seeing him perform outside the comfortable little world of Green Mountain High School, or Elitch Garden's Stax of Wax was a little scary. We were pretty sure Chris was good, but we were probably prejudiced. But seeing him on Mesa's main stage that day still remains one of the great moments of my life. He was better than I thought he was! Sweet vindication.

I had that same feeling driving to The Lone Tree Arts Center to see Starkey Production's White Christmas. Chris had been in Littleton Town Hall's production of the show last year and he thought this would provide a good vehicle to use for branching out into play production. Judging by the packed house, I would say he was right.

First of all, let's talk about the facility. While not as huge or as grand as its northern cousin, The Arvada Center, Lone Tree's 500 seat main stage, art filled atrium, and glass filled peaked facade has provided an impressive launch for an important regional arts center. My only complaint about the place is that there isn't a great restaurant next door. A pizza joint, yes, and all those mallish little outposts, but no Mizuna or TAG or Park Burger in sight. An enterprising restaurateur should take note.

Back to the show. White Christmas, like most Irving Berlin shows, is nothing more than a review of Berlin's music wrapped around a hammered together plot. But who cares. The music, for the most part ("What Can You Do With A General" might be an exception), is terrific. Add to this a strong cast and Wendy Duncan's choreography and you end up with a memorable night at the theater.

Be forewarned, the first scene starts the evening off slowly when the curtain opens on a huge stage with newsreel footage of WWII on an overhead screen. Below we find a small grouping of soldiers huddled around on Christmas Eve as Bob Wallace and Phil Davis regale them with Christmas standards. Quick freeze and cut to postwar Manhattan as Wallace and Davis star on Sullivan. From there we somehow get to a train traveling to Vermont and the fun part of the show begins. To this point all the musical numbers are terrific, but "Snow" stops the show. (I've always wanted to say "stops the show.")

To make a long story short, our heroes fall in love, save their old general from financial ruin, and put on a show in a barn. And at the end of the show there is even a bit of muted flag wagging. This is everything a Christmas audience could want and it is delivered with pace and class.

Even though some of the earlier expository dialogue is lost to the flashy musical numbers, things begin to smooth out by the time the scene moves to Vermont. Deborah Persoff as Martha Watson, the Inn's concierge, is one performer who is powerful enough to fill the big stage and nearly walks off with the show. I liked her here better than last year in the same role at Town Hall. That stage was just too small for her.

Randy St. Pierre and Chris as Wallace and Davis sound terrific together. St. Pierre wisely gets out of the way on dance numbers and Chris tones down his big voice to blend perfectly with all of his partners on stage. Chris' two dance numbers, "The Best Things Happen When You're Dancing," and "I Love a Piano," are better than the same numbers last year at Town Hall. First of all, there is room to move. Second, all the girls in the chorus are dancers and the guys at least move well enough to fake it from upstage. But I think the best thing about the choreography is that it isn't overly ambitious. It doesn't ask the chorus to do more than it can, and yet it is powerful and full of energy. And of course there is Chris up front in each number leading the way.

Brianna Firestone and Leslie Frankel are wonderful as the Haynes sisters. I'm especially glad that Leslie is thin enough for Chris to lift in the dance numbers.

Most especially, Paul Page takes the sappy General Waverly part and makes it interesting. I actually found myself tearing up during his last speech, which is especially remarkable because I'm usually looking at my watch as final curtains approach.

High praise for having real musicians. Your five piece combo (Jeremy waling on sax) is jazzy and loud and the transition to recorded music for the production numbers is seamless.

So what is the message here? Postpone all further activities and get tickets for White Christmas at The Lone Tree Arts Center. Last night is December 23.

Vindicated once again.

I Never Got A Ham!

Life has been so wonderful lately that I have had nothing to blog about. It would be unseemly if I simply shared all the good stuff that I have been feeling, plus it is no fun to write about stuff without being sarcastic.

Luckily I found something in this morning's POST that pissed me off enough to stop watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and come down here to the computer. "Alabama OK with apple for teacher but not an iTunes card" reads the headline on the little sidebar blurb on page 8A.

After the passage of a new ethics law, Alabama teachers may face fines of $1000 and up to a year in jail for accepting gifts from students in excess of $25 in value. The article specifically targets hams and $25 dollar gift cards as examples of holiday excess directed toward teachers. However, homemade cookies, coffee mugs (presumably with "World's Greatest Teacher" printed on them), and fruit baskets are okay, the article asserts.

Now that takes all the fun out of teaching right there. I remember throwing an extra garbage bag into the car the last day of school before Christmas break just to carry home all the largesse I knew I would score.

I'm kind of glad I didn't get a ham. First of all I couldn't bear the mental picture of some nerdy sophomore boy being forced to lug twelve pounds of pork to school in his already overfull backpack. And then what if I had the kid during first period? Where would I put the ham? The minifridge in the the lang arts office would already be full of salads and desserts for our last day pot luck lunch. And it would be embarrassing sneaking the thing into our house with the neighbors looking out their collective windows, armed with yet more proof of the profligacy of public education.

Come to think of it, In thirty-years I never saw a single colleague get a ham from a student. Although, I did get a bag of elk jerky once. It was very good washed down with a cold Negra Modelo.

I can't imagine how such legislation would have impacted my career in the classroom. On the first day of class I would always let the kids know I was aware of the difficulty of choosing just the right occasional gifts for teachers. When I was in school, I struggled with that just like they will struggle, I assured them. Then I would offer suggestions. Chocolate chip cookies--NO NUTS--were always welcome. If homemade, so much the better. I let them know that on movie days it was always appropriate to bring some extra popcorn--Jolly Time popped by hand on the stove--for the teacher. I realize that my gift list was modest in terms of price, but I wonder if my pandering would go against the spirit of the law?

The fact of the matter is that we never needed the extra garbage bag. My briefcase would usually do the trick. Although, we have gotten some great gifts and we've always accepted them as our due. I still have the black Cross pen Dane Erickson gave me his senior year. In fact, I would be lost without it. It is the only utensil I can use when doing crossword puzzles each morning.

One lovely young lady in CCB gave us a year long membership to the Denver Art Museum! If Colorado had had a similar law back then, I would have been breaking the law to accept it. Ethics be damned. We enjoyed the museum that year and especially liked the newsletter.

Katie Haeck gave Kathie a very pricey basket that still sits on our brass top table impressing visitors. We've also received gift certificates to expensive restaurants and some pretty impressive bottles of wine.

But mostly it was cookies and cards with an occasional apple thrown in for good measure. We would go home with our prizes and put them under the tree if they were still wrapped. Kathie was always happy with how festive it made the house look. I was always busy counting, seeing who got the most.

Legitimate News Vs. Cynical Manipulation

A Focused Free Writing

The next time you watch the Broncos play, turn the sound down and pretend the quarterback you are watching is the media's darling. His arm is golden. He sees the field. His footwork is solid and he does not make mistakes. Then evaluate Tebow's performance through that prism.

Now, turn the tables and tune in the next time the Patriots play. Turn the volume down and pretend that in Tom Brady you are watching an inept bungler who has no business starting in a professional football game. I predict you will be surprised at the results. All of Tebow's passes that used to be arrant have now been broken up by good defense, or should have been caught, or would have been caught had the receiver not cut his route short. And his successes? The great touchdown pass to Decker in the Oakland game? Ditto his pass up the middle to Decker for a touchdown against Kansas City? Instead of being momentary aberrations in an otherwise hapless quarterback, they have become yet more evidence of Tebow's sure fire admittance to the hall of fame.

On the other hand, Tom Brady becomes a stiff. His once brilliant survey of the field becomes the result of a great offensive scheme. Any overthrown balls, instead of being attributed to the loss of speed at the wide receiver position, have become inexcusable mistakes. If he leads his team to victory, it is now a fluke to be marveled at as we wait until next week to see if he can repeat this miracle.

We are slaves to this media supplied filter, but it serves us right because thinking on our own has become just too damn hard. There is too much info out there to wade through and it is nearly impossible to distinguish legitimate news from cynical manipulation.

There was a brief little story on television this morning about the recent controversy over oil deposits around DIA and its environs that would require fracking in order to access the stuff. The news crew reported that precious few residents of the area knew what fracking was and were angry that they hadn't been more thoroughly informed about the down sides to the procedure--like the elimination of our water table. This piece of information was accompanied by televised images of the confused residents. I think we were supposed to feel sorry for them.

I don't think the Great Fracking Controversy has any clear cut answers, but the uninformed residents only made me mad. How could you live in this decade and not be familiar with the term? And why don't you go out and find out for yourself what it means and what its implications are?

You see, I think the presupplied media filter we are given for any situation has conditioned us to wait to be told things. As boring as a droning lecturer can be, if you just play the stupid game it is kind of easy to get by. Even though the spin on cable news makes the truth impossible to discern, it is a lot easier to listen to Fox or MSNBC and their versions of "Obamacare" than it is to actually read that unbelievably boring document.

So we end up believing all sorts of contradictory things. Fox News devotees believe that computerizing medical records will lead to the scary world of Big Brother and Communism. MSNBC folks believe that computerizing medical records will save money and that Republican naysayers have been bought and paid for.

Fox News listeners think the main issue in the next election is whether or not we should raise taxes. If the right wing manages to frame the issue in those terms, the results of the election are easy to predict. MSNBC types, on the other hand, think the main issue in the next election is whether or not we should preserve our social safety net. This is a completely different way to frame the same issue and would result in a different vote.

I was thinking about all of this as I was reading The New York Times this Sunday. I was struck by the number of straight news articles that would elicit completely contradictory reactions, depending on the reader.

There is an article on page one that talks about the V-22 Osprey, a $70 million hover aircraft the Marines use in Afghanistan. It seems that the Marines love the machine, even though it has an alarmingly high failure rate. Congress has been debating the fate of the Osprey since the Bush Administration and the Marines, fearful of impending budget cuts when the "SuperCommittee" (There's a misnomer if there ever was one.) fails to reach an agreement, are busy showcasing their craft by giving dignitaries rides to and from the Pentagon.

My reaction is one of bemusement. I'm going to enjoy hearing the Republicans rationalize why we can't let the automatic trigger touch this cool aircraft, so lets raise social security age to 70. My conservative friends at the Y and some more that I used to teach with would not appreciate my sense of irony and would instead be shaking their collective heads over yet another example of the misplaced priorities of the Obama Administration.

Another article on the front page is about suspect programs in the nation's law schools. It seems that law schools spend most of their time talking, reading, and thinking theory and precious little time teaching the practical side of the law. Now, anybody who as ever seen My Cousin Vinnie already knows this, but you get the idea. To illustrate this problem, the article sites a course offering in a typical law school: "A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Post-modern Legal Theory."

My reaction? Cool. The Aristotle class sounds good. I think law school should be about theory and thinking and arguing and being obnoxious. You know, all those things that lawyers are. How hard can it be to figure out how to file a merger or file a complaint? If Joe Pesci can do it, anyone can.

But others would be furious that a lot of tax dollars end up susidizing a lot of this time wasted on phony things like Aristotle and obscure court cases.

Finally, an article appears on page 13 that really highlights our divergent filters for looking at any issue: "Deficit Panel Faces a Rift Over Who Ought To Pay." I don't have to go into particulars. I think the panel will fail and ultimately Congress will fail to come up with any bipartisan plan because Republicans simply refuse to consider raising taxes and therefore a compromise is impossible. My Republican friends would snort at my naivete and say the Democrats' refusal to cut entitlements makes any compromise impossible.

Neither one of those positions is an accurate statement of the situation, but this isn't about accuracy. This is about creating and sustaining media generated illusions and winning the next election.

And betting on the intellectual laziness of the American people is a good way to start.

NEMESIS

by Philip Roth

If I were still teaching Advanced Placement, I would add this book to the reading list as a point of comparison during any discussion of tragedy. A number of reviewers have touted it as a modern day tragedy just dripping with Greekness in the same way that they touted Edgar Sawtelle, the canine upgrading of Hamlet that was all the rage a couple of years ago. Roth's novel contains all the elements of tragedy except the most important, a great soul who can feel deeply. That isn't to say that it is a disappointing novel. It isn't. Like everything Roth writes, it is topical, witty, innovative, and nearly impossible to ignore.

Bucky Cantor, our hero, is a young, bespectacled man who seems to carry misfortune around with him like a cloak. His mother died in child birth and his father, an inveterate gambler, was sent to prison for two years and never returned to Newark. Bucky ended up with his grandparents and managed to live a good life. He became a great athlete and diver, notwithstanding his rotten vision. Much to Bucky's shame, his vision kept him out of the army during the 1944 build up of WWII. Instead he ends up as a teacher, lifeguard, coach, and summer playground director in Newark.

Of course, this smattering of good fortune is interrupted by the Newark polio epidemic of 1944 and Bucky is so disturbed by the mounting number of dead or dying boys and girls that he, convinced he must be doing more harm than good, rationalizes an escape to the Poconos and the summer camp where his fiancee works.

Life at camp is good. Bucky's life is a lot like Bill Murray's in Meatballs, or it would be if Bucky were a little less serious. But when even the camp isn't safe from the epidemic, Bucky becomes convinced that he is a carrier. And becomes further convinced that this God everyone keeps worshipping is at best an incompetent bungler and at worst an evil inventor of ways to torment the innocent.

It should be no surprise that Bucky contracts the disease, or maybe he was a carrier. At the end we see him bitter and alone, talking with the novel's narrator who finally reveals himself at the end in a Rothian tour de force manipulation of point of view.

So why isn't all this tragic? I loved Bucky and worried about him and all the little kids he cared for. I knew he wasn't going to survive the book unscathed, so I was filled with all the dread I needed for a catharsis. But I'm sorry Bucky. I knew Hamlet and you're not him.

Bucky mostly reminds me of The Chief, Salinger's hero in "The Laughing Man." John Gedsudski, The Chief, loved his little Central Park charges. He regaled them with stories and feats of mythic proportions on the playing fields of Manhattan. He was their hero for one perfect summer and he let an unrequited love ruin that world for a little while.

The Chief disappears and his charges are left disillusioned. Bucky's charges die and disappear and he is the one left in disillusionment.

His initial heroism on the playground standing up to the epidemic, consoling kids and parents alike, was admirable. And when he eventually turns his gaze toward the heavens and literally shakes his fist at the gods, he verges on the brink of the tragic stance. But he loses sight of the gods when his sacrifices for the good of others seem more like petulant bursts of egotism than the stuff of tragic heights.

Finally, this reminds me of my comparison of Freedom to Anna Karenina last year. Why does great literature have to be ponderous and difficult to read? Why is Tolstoy better than Franzen or Roth? The obvious answer is that their characters are greater souls than the ones Franzen and Roth create. I would have to agree, but hasten to add that American Realism doesn't lend itself to the tragic emotion the way Russian Romanticism does.

Bucky is just an everyday schmuck with a past no more troubled or blessed than lots of ordinary schmucks' lives. He rises to the challenges of his life with love and courage and fear and rationalizations and recriminations just like a lot of people would. Watching his story unfold is fascinating and poses all sorts of great questions about fate, panic, despair, blame, and the way communities deal with inexplicable loss.

This book was made to be taught to high school seniors in Advanced Placement.

* * * * *

A SMALL DIGRESSION

Have you heard about the Unluckiest Man In The World?

When he was just a child--confirmation age--he was at a church picnic during the spring. He was out in left field watching his parents sitting together on the bleachers cheering him on just like they always did when a lightening bolt came out of nowhere and turned both mother and father into cinders.

The kindly parish priest invited the poor orphan to come and live in the basement of the church. There our hero stayed through high school, shoveling coal into the furnace and chasing rats out of the same church basement where he was sodomized twice a week by the old man in the flowing cassock.

But ever resilient, he escaped the church and managed to get himself all the way to NYU in New York City where he began to study drama. Things went well for his undergraduate years and when he went to his first audition he even landed a lead part in a new production being mounted that year.

Of course, on the way to his first rehearsal he was crossing 42nd Street when he caught his foot in a street grate and a Federal Express van, in the act of parking, crushed our poor friend's ankle.

Needless to say, he was replaced by his understudy, a strange, brooding young man named Marlon Brando, who went on to win his first Tony for his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Our hero never really recovered from that disappointment. His ankle never returned to normal and he made a living by teaching drama in a local Catholic high school.

But one day he did get a call from a long lost acquaintance in Los Angeles who had remembered his audition for Street Car all those years ago. He offered him a part in a new sit com and told him to get right out to LA.

The Unluckiest Man In The World got his ticket and was flying happily 30,000 feet above Iowa when he noticed that the far left propeller had stopped turning. Soon, a gentleman across the aisle shouted that the far right propeller had also stopped. As the remainder of the propellers stopped working, our hero sighed and walked slowly up to the front of the plane and entered the cockpit.

"Excuse me, but I know how to get the plane safely down."

The pilots were ready for any suggestion.

"You see, I am The Unluckiest Man In The World and the props are going out because of me. Just give me a parachute and let me jump and the rest of you will be fine."

In no position to argue, they gave him a parachute and sent him out the nearest door. No sooner had he started his descent than all four engines whirred back to life.

Our hero smiled and pulled his rip cord.

You'll never guess what happened.

That's right.

So he pulled the emergency cord.

Yep, you guessed it.

Finally out of options and plummeting to earth, The Unluckiest Man In The World put his hands together in prayer.

"St. Francis, my patron saint. If you've ever helped me help me now."

And a big hand came out of a cloud and grabbed The Unluckiest Man In The World. And with a booming voice asked, "ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI OR ST. FRANCIS XAVIER?"

"Xavier," The Unluckiest Man In The World replied.

And with that the big hand opened up and dashed the scrawny body to the earth in disgust.

SHOP CLASS AS SOUL CRAFT by Matthew B. Crawford

And some random connections

If Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a philosophical-literary-psychological exploration of the Ideal vs. the Real, Plato vs. Aristotle, and the virtue of honest work, than Crawford's book explores those same issues from an economic and political angle.

There is no Phaedrus, no kid to take care of, and no one teeters on the brink of psychosis, at least no one we care about. Instead, Shop Class As Soulcraft is exactly as advertised in its subtitle: An inquiry into the value of work.

This book's thesis should be familiar to anyone growing up in America the same time I did, meaning all of us at or nearing retirement age. We don't work with our hands anymore. No one does. Even though I was completely inept as a young man, I could at least open the hood of a car and have some recognition of the parts of an internal combustion engine and their purposes. I see nothing remotely familiar under the hood of my Inifiniti. If my transistor radio broke back in 1964, I was expected to make a feeble attempt to figure out the problem and fix it. Sometimes I actually succeeded and those were great moments. I couldn't break into a new radio today if my life depended on it. If something goes wrong, the stupid contraption gets disposed of and replaced by a new one.

My sister's washing machine broke down the other day and her husband, a man who knows how to work with his hands if there ever was one, tried to fix the thing. After a few futile days and confronted with the reality of the bits and pieces of what was once a washer in front of him, Dick finally called for the repairman. After paying the guy to recollect the machine into some semblance of order and to cart it off, Dick bought a new machine. He would have saved time, money, and piles of dirty clothes if he would have just bought a new one in the first place.

In short, we are becoming increasingly cut off from our tools and therefore from the world of experience. Work of all kinds has become trivialized, computerized, organized, and assembly-lined. It has become symptomatic of the larger societal dichotomy, the separation of thinking from doing.

There was a time when work had a kind of dignity and the worker was vitally connected to the fruits of his labors. Then Henry Ford came along with his assembly line and put into practice the thinking of Frederick Winslow Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management. Scientific Management! In other words, the movements of labor were analyzed, stream lined, parcelled out, measured, controlled, and most importantly, timed. Workers became parts of a machine and there was no real connection between their work and the finished product.

It is interesting that in 1913 when the assembly line at the Ford plant was going full bore, there was such a flight of workers from the factory that for every hundred positions it was necessary to hire 963!

How do you end up controlling your workers when they find themselves in such degrading jobs? It worked in the good old USA because we invented advertising and were able to dangle the fruits of their labor in front of them so tantalizingly that they became consumers, consumers in need of even more money. And when they didn't have the cash, they borrowed. Before they knew it, working in assembly lines was the only way to feed the fever.

So, the idea of wages as compensation was born to justify the intolerable conditions for labor.

All of this takes its most interesting turn in a discussion of the difference between The Crew and The Team. He makes an important distinction between Real Work--the kind that produces a tangible product, like a plumbing installation or a rebuilt motorcycle engine, that can be seen and judged--and not-so-real work that results in ideas that can neither be seen nor judged, like the work of a college professor or a think tank. Real work is done by men and women in crews. These crews are characterized by a hierarchy based on experience, a division of labor, accountability to the customer and to one another because the result of the crew's work is visible and measurable. Social problems, historical analyses, recommendations from the social sciences, investment advice, all are done by teams. Teams are characterized by group dynamics, consensus, brainstorming. Where hierarchy is essential for a crew to function (you don't want an apprentice plumber telling a journeyman how to do a job), it is anathema for a team. This just further exemplifies our cultural disconnect between thinking and doing. The following quote sums this up best.

Not surprisingly, it is the office rather than the job site that has seen the advent of speech codes, diversity workshops, and other forms of higher regulation. Some might attribute this to the greater mixing of the sexes in the office, but I believe a more basic reason is that when there is no concrete task that rules the job--an autonomous good that is visible to all--then there is no secure basis for social relations. Maintaining consensus and preempting conflict become the focus of management, and as a result everyone feels they have to walk on eggshells. Where no appeal to a carpenter's level is possible, sensitivity training becomes necessary.

Look at what happened to Green Mountain High School in particular and all schools in general. The job at school is not measurable in the sense that I can use a level to check a frame I just pounded together. Yeah, our country has spent my lifetime trying to figure out ways to measure the work of schools, but, contrary to all you CSAPers out there, has yet to come up with anything that really works. Therefore, at the end of my career we were all walking around on eggshells with each new contradictory directive and each rehash of last year's educational panacea. No one knew what was expected because what was expected kept changing with each knee-jerk reaction.

I think the main reason Crawford wrote this book was to point out the bad rap we give practical education, the Doing half of the dichotomy. As a society we place a higher value on the thinker, the white collar worker. We pay them more. We elect them to make decisions for us. We seem to think that they are some how better trained in analytical thinking. But Crawford strongly asserts, and my experience corroborates this, that there is AT LEAST as much analytical thinking going on in a carpenter's head late at night when he is wide awake in bed trying to figure how to compensate for a house with no right angles, or a plumber trying to figure out a tricky installation.

He just wants us to realize that there is plenty of nobility to go around, a nice thought.

My point, finally, isn't to recommend motorcycling in particular, not to idealize the life of a mechanic. It is rather to suggest that if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life.

Crawford ends his book by making some political and economic points that are quite appropriate for today. To be mercifully brief, he contrasts the idea that we have an "obligation to others" to the notion that we should act in "solidarity with others." Acting in solidarity is what happens when we acknowledge the nobility of all types of work and, most important, that we live in a shared world. He ends his essay with a magnificent statement.

Such a sociable individuality contrasts with the self-enclosure that is implicit in the idea of "autonomy," which means giving a law to oneself. The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude. For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is not of our making.

In "E.O. Wilson's Theory of Everything" (The Atlantic, November 2011.),Howard W. French writes about a controversial evolutionary biologist's take on this very idea of autonomy.

Now, I never was fortunate enough to take Bio II with C. Fite, so I am not as conversant with Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould and the rest as I probably should be, so bear with me for a little while. First of all, Wilson and Gould are not particularly fond of each other. Wilson thinks Gould fudges on his research and Gould thinks Wilson's conclusions approach the delusional. Like I've always said, there is nothing more fun than a good evolutionary debate.

There is a hot national debate going on among biologists concerning the kin-selection theory and the idea, promoted by Wilson, of eusociality. We can best understand this by looking at ants. Wilson loves ants. Darwinism suggests that individuals within a species will make the necessary adaptations to preserve their genes. How does this account for the behavior of female ants in a colony who sacrifice their reproductivity to the queen? Wilson says that ants, like humans, are eusocial, meaning they unselfishly put the good of the group over the good of the individual. Having a queen control reproduction frees the rest of the ants, both male and female, to protect the community against those pesky termites. Protecting the community, while not necessarily the best thing for the individual, is the best way to insure the survival of the species.

I always have this argument with people, especially conservatives. This is a society built on cooperation, not competition. If we are to survive it will be through cooperation.

In the studies Wilson has done, he discovered that within the confines of a group, selfish individuals seemed to prosper more than the selfless, but he also discovered that groups characterized by selfless rather than selfish behavior, prospered more than their selfish counterparts. I wish republicans in Congress would heed that lesson. The article ends with the following wonderful passage.

Group selection brings about virtue, and individual selection, which is competing with it, creates sin. That, in a nutshell, is an explanation of the human condition.

Schools and Snow

I've always liked schools on those days--one or two a semester--when snow makes districts across the state teeter on the brink of canceling classes. Those are the days when classrooms are one third full with kids carrying heavy parkas and shod in moon boots and they all sit around talking about how hard it was to get to school and how stupid the superintendent is for not canceling. I liked hanging out in the otherwise idle classroom with those few hearty souls, drinking coffee, catching up on gossip, sometimes even talking about classwork, letting kids go out to the cafeteria to get hot chocolate. On days when the snow looked particularly beautiful, I'd get the class to go outside with me and make snow angels.

I would periodically walk out of my windowless classroom and down to the door at the end of the hall to check out the weather. There would usually be a small and ever changing group of teachers huddled around the little window, speculating on when the superintendent would tell us to close up shop, guessing at the road conditions and the chances of making it home without major delays.

If I was lucky, I would have left all of my papers in need of grading at home so I could waste my planning period in the lounge drinking coffee and bitching about suspect decision making skills at the district level. Back in the good old days before smoking was banned, the lounge would be filled with smoke and loud stories from jaded assistant principals with nothing else to do but regale us with school humor and inside stories.

Somewhere around eleven when the honchos finally cancelled school, we would all bond in the unplowed parking lot, window scrapers in hand, custodians coming around with battery chargers, hapless kids looking forlornly out at Green Mountain Drive for any signs of a ride. We truly were a community on days like those. More than once we stayed around till the lot was empty, pushing and jumping cars, giving frozen kids a ride home and then coming back up the hill for more.

The communal nature of the whole thing started in the morning. Just like everyone else, we would pile in the car with the radio tuned to KOA so we could listen for closures. (Once, we were about to turn off Kipling to Jewell just as we heard that Jeffco was closed. Another time we got the news as we pulled into the parking lot.) Usually, by the time we reached the bottom of Green Mountain Drive the hope of getting to school on time was a distant memory and we were reconciled to the long wait going up the hill. Back in the seventies and eighties, four wheel drive was a rarity and so Green Mountain Drive become one long and slippery parking lot on snowy mornings.

This was all complicated by the fact that a goodly number of those futilely spinning their tires were beginning drivers with no clue how to deal with snow and ice. We would get out of our cars with mugs of hot coffee and talk to each other about the crisp weather and listen to the whirr of spinning tires as first hour slowly slid into second.

See, I've discovered something else I miss about teaching. Those were great times with great kids and colleagues. (The ones who weren't so great normally stayed home at any excuse.) I miss the anticipation of the night before. I miss convincing myself that we will get snowed out, so I can watch the football game instead of grading those essays. I miss waking in the middle of the night to look out the window at the snow. Smiles and relief if the snow is falling. Despair and existential nausea if the weather is clear. I miss hanging on the weather forecast's every word. I miss the manly feeling of driving your family safely across snow and ice in the dead of winter.

Now it just isn't the same. I don't have dreams about snowfall. I don't worry about my kids missing that all-important CSAP practice test. I'm neither disappointed nor relieved by the morning's weather. I make some coffee, shovel the walk so all the kids can get to class unobstructed, wait for the paper man to show, and play Scrabble on my iPhone. Weather? What weather?