Twenty One

Wow.

I won't say "It seems like only yesterday..." because I doesn't, but it sure seems like a lot less than twenty one years since I took on the job description: "Father".

It's the hardest job I've ever done, because kids don't come with an owner's manual. There is no degree program: "Parent 101". There can't be, since each child is an individual. The best I could come up with was to look to the examples around me. First and foremost were my own parents. I guessed I should look at what they did - both right and wrong- and use that info. I also looked at other parents around me and copied from their notes - keeping the "good" and throwing out the "bad". Still, I didn't have any younger siblings or even any younger cousins around to watch grow - so I was almost completely and utterly in the dark.

I knew that I did not want to create a "Mini Me". I had seen that too many other times before - parents who tried their best to mold their children in their own image. I saw this as patently unfair to the child, and often had dire consequences down the road.

I decided that the most important thing my parents ever taught me was to think for myself. When questions were posed, I seldom ever gave a straight answer-in fun and as an effort to encourage critical thinking - or I walked through the steps of how to go about finding the answers. If I didn't know, I said so and went about finding the answer. I figured that no matter how life ahead would be different, the ability to think, rather than just blindly accept what was being handed out would be critical.

I tried to be as "hands off" as possible - perhaps the opposite of a "helicopter parent"- only stepping in when it appeared that things had gone seriously astray. I offered advice when it was asked for. The big drawback is that that could be misconstrued as apathy. Quite the opposite. Caring enough to step back and let go is a tricky proposition. You want to step in, but....

I tried to lead by example - both in doing "the right thing" and following my own path, regardless of what everyone else is doing. I hope seeing someone do the right thing - even when no one was watching - just because it was the right thing took root. I also wish that my being "different" is an example of living by what is right for you, rather than just doing what everyone else does... because everyone else is doing it.

Perhaps my failings are a good example of leading by example... of what not to do.

I also tried to be a man of my word. If I promised something, I tried like hell to deliver. If I threatened something, I followed through (just often enough to keep the "threat" credible). I'm not sure my track record was too good, but I tried.

I encouraged learning, exploration and trying new things. I hope it didn't seem too scattershot or ADD... or that one shouldn't delve into things in depth, rather just superficially

In short, I sought to teach independent thinking, honor, and compassion. Pretty vague concepts, but ones that are essential, no matter where life takes you

I think, based on what I've seen, I succeeded, but the final exam is often decades long.

I hope I did a good job, for my part, and where I dropped the ball can be overlooked.

Certitude

I said a while back that I promised myself I wasn't going to discuss religion, politics or red headed women here.

I've already violated that once, so what the hell - I'm going to do it again, and this time I'll violate BOTH of the first taboos. (The topic of red headed women remains sacrosanct).

What do they have in common? What George Will referred to as an "excess of certitude"; the view that the world can be viewed on simple terms, and that one's particular point of view is unshakably correct.

While being firm in one's convictions can be admirable, it seems that "my way is the right way" all too often leads to "my way is the ONLY way". (And in the case of religion, this all too often leads to "Our God can beat up your God").

What happened to mutual respect? The art of compromise? The willingness to accept someone else on their terms, though they may be different? Why does everything have to be an "all-or-nothing" proposition?

Politics seems to have degenerated into a test of political wills. Each side tries to ram it's agenda through, over the opposition, who dig their heels in and try to block anything and everything that their opponents try to do. The health care debacle was a perfect example. Rather than the Republicans accepting that the Democrats had the horsepower to push the bill through, and try to shape it into something workable, we got nonsense about "Death Panels!" and "Socialism!". What SHOULD have happened was the Republican party sitting down and saying "Ok if you change XYZ, and take this out, put that in and modify this, we'll vote for the bill". Why would it have been so horrible for a bipartisan party to sit down and say "Ok, we can all agree that our health care system needs reform..." and work from there? Why is "compromise" a dirty word? Why do we admire a shrewd bargainer in the business world, yet view politics in absolutist terms?

Politics has become all about "winning".... and you and I are the losers.

In the case of religion, I like to liken the world's religions to three blind men touching an elephant, and each describing what an elephant is, based on the part they're touching. The one touching the trunk has a very different picture than the one holding the tail, or the one touching the side, yet if you were to ask each of them what they thought an elephant was, they would be very adamant in their "picture". They would all be right, yet, in a way, they would all be wrong, because none of them can see the whole. Only Buddhism says "there are many paths". The rest, all too often, say "Our way is the only way". "Our God is the only God". "We're the Chosen People and you're not". I don't know about you, but to me, to say that you know unequivocally what God thinks/wants is at best arrogant, at worst, very, very dangerous. Too often that certainty leads to people thinking God has anointed them judge, jury and executioner.

People of faith seem totally unwilling to admit that "faith" by definition is "a belief in something that can't be proven" - because that opens the door to admitting that they might not be entirely correct. I see nothing wrong with that, and do NOT see it as a sign of weakness, but to many it's tantamount to blasphemy. To admit that maybe you don't KNOW exactly what God wants might mean you'd have to accept someone else may also have a piece of the puzzle.

As a student of history, I try to console myself by telling myself "This is nothing new. It's happened before and things have worked out", but last time we got so polarized, and let radicals on either end of the spectrum decide the fate of the country, there was a five year war that left about 700,000 Americans dead.

The Founding Fathers would no doubt understand, but I think they'd be very dismayed to see what we've become.

Honor....Where's it gone?

"Honor is a gift a man gives to himself" - Rob Roy.

I was talking to a co-worker today - he was telling me about his family and personal issues that were sort of piling up on him at the moment. He tried to apply for Family Leave, but was told he'd used it up when he was out on disability for a torn rotator cuff. He asked how then, could some of the other employees get Family Leave - on multiple occasions- when their grounds for taking it were far less solid than his. He said he was told - by someone in authority - "Oh, well, you have to learn to play the game".

This incensed him - and to tell the truth, me as well. "Play the game? Play the game???" he said. Here he was trying to do things the right way and getting slapped down for it, while others, who were less-than-honest were getting away with something, because they knew how to "play the game".

He and I are not just co-workers. We share Italian ancestry and both grew up in a small, predominantly Italian town. I know from whence his indignation comes.

Back in the day.....

When we were growing up, there were two things that were pretty much written in stone: "Don't rat anyone out" and "Your word means everything". The first was a low rent version of "Omerta", I suppose, but the second was a very old-fashioned version of a code of honor.

It was completely inconceivable to go back on your word. Business deals were done with a handshake.

When I was buying my first car, my boss went to the bank with me (this was before they handed out loans like popcorn), lied about how long I'd been working there, and co-signed my car loan. You can bet your ass, I was there at the bank on the day before the payment was due, every month. Even if I'd been in the hospital in a body cast, I'd have sold off one of my kidneys to make sure that loan got paid. You might as well have suggested I could carry the moon around in my pocket, as to suggest I default on that loan.

Screwing someone over just wasn't done - politics and "business" notwithstanding. An employer could be counted on to do the fair thing and an employee - if they were smart - wouldn't try to take advantage of an employer.

If you said you were going to do something, you did it. If you borrowed money, you paid it back - and not just because Giuseppe was going to come around asking which was your favorite kneecap. If someone did you a favor, you OWED them - and if they came around twenty years later to collect, you were still obligated to return the favor.

Not so, today. People make and break promises all the while. Hell, getting someone to even show up somewhere they said they'd be is a sketchy proposition. The workplace is the same: Having heard horror story after horror story about people collecting disability or compensation, were I to get injured at work, my first stop after the hospital would be a compensation lawyer.

Something has been lost.

I Are A Kollidge Stoodint

Initial impressions:

If colleges were held to the same standards of customer service as retail businesses, they'd be out of business in a heartbeat. I don't think I've ever called for something and gotten through on the first try. I even got a voice message that stated "We're all in a meeting right now...." Grrrrr....

JESUS CHRIST I'M OLD! A great number of my fellow students are 18-21-ish. It was kind of amusing when the prof left the room to retrieve some papers, once. IMMEDIATELY, twenty some-odd cell phones and frenzied texting commenced.

I also wonder how they manage to carry a full course load. I'm taking one class per semester (one class, one lab) and it's all I feel I can comfortably manage.

I was surprised to find that I still remember the names of many of the elements, when we were handed a copy of the Periodic Table. (Of course there are NEW elements that I didn't know about that have been added, since I last looked, but we won't talk about that). Hopefully my internal hard drive isn't full and I can assimilate this new material as well as I did...uh...a long time ago.

The Camera Eye

My mother and sister both got the "artistic" gene in the family and I've always felt somewhat depraved - er- deprived.

Years ago, I spent -what was at the time- stupid money on a camera and lenses. I took the camera everywhere with me. I read book after book on composition, camera settings and technical details. I took tons and tons of pictures.

They all sucked.

After spending countless dollars on film and developing, only to be disappointed by shitty pictures, I gave up.

Fast forward a whole bunch of years. I bought a digital point-and-shoot camera and managed to take a few decent pictures with it, but found myself limited by what the camera could NOT do.

Taking that as a sign that I might be ready for something a little more "PRO-fessional" I bought a Sony Alpha 200 and started rediscovering photography. I also got Aperture as a Christmas gift last year, and that's been a big help. I think part of what I was missing with film was being able to control things in "the darkroom".

For me, digital has been very freeing. I am no longer afraid to take chances, because I don't have to pay to develop my pictures. I can shoot away and not even think about it. I also know that a certain amount of things can be corrected in "the darkroom".

I still have to learn to slow down and THINK about composition and I need to kick the "auto" crutch to the curb, but I have managed to take a few ...ok... pictures. I am really trying to learn to SEE pictures - a skill those of us without that artistic genes really struggle with.

Where the hell was this 30+ years ago?

They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore

(Did I just invoke Greg Kihn???? Shoot me now.)

While doing some genealogical research, in an article about the death (from drink) of one of my ancestors, they made reference to him having been "...in the spy business with Ephraim Dow and that other shining light, Ad Webster."

Now apart from being very intrigued by the reference to the "spy business", I was rather amused at the sarcastic reference to Ad Webster's character. (MCMAWG thinks sarcasm, done properly, is an art form).

I had to know more. Even though it was tangential to the original purpose of my research, (finding Dell) I began to dig into the newspaper archives.

I found a gold mine of amusement.

Apparently, Ephraim Dow was a politically appointed Federal Marshall, and from what I can gather, they were excise tax agents, charged with making sure taverns and places that sold tobacco were properly licensed and paying taxes - the papers referred to him as a "revenue spy" in a couple of places.

It appears that, if someone was charged with Federal crime, they had to be taken to the capital in Albany to be tried. Whomever had to transport them to court got a per diem - even if the charges were dropped. Can you see the potential for abuse?

I also found that the papers took great delight in poking Ephraim Dow:

"Ephraim Dow and His Friends On A Bender - Dow Sentenced to $25 Fine and 45 Days Imprisonment - A Season Of Quiet Seclusion For Him.

The day before yesterday, Ephraim Dow, the attenuated revenue spy and informer was dispatched to arrest a saloon keeper in Geneseo by the name of John Conroy. It seems that Mr. Conroy, who did not have a license, sold two glasses of liquor to Ad Webster and a complaint against him was therefore lodged with US Commissioner Gilbert.

Dow, on his arrival in Geneseo, proceeded to test either Mr. Conroy's or somebody else's whiskey and tasted it so often that the inhabitants of that village were greeted with the sight of a United States official in a beastly state of intoxication...."

I admit to literally laughing out loud at that description. This wasn't an isolated incident - the Rochester Union and Advertiser is full of articles like that. One of my favorite articles takes great delight in Ephraim getting "euchred" by a woman. (I believe "euchred" would be the equivalent of today's "pwned"):

Ephraim Dow Euchred by a Woman

"Mrs. Schleber keeps a boarding house and lager beer saloon on Front Street. The other day she received a fresh invoice of beer and it so happened that on one of the barrels, the stamp had slid over the bung hole, and in driving in the spigot, part of the stamp was driven in with it. This is a gross violation of the revenue law which declares that the stamp must not be torn.

Through some means or other, Ephraim Dow, the revenue spy and informer, got word of this transaction and it was not long before Mrs. Schleber saw his bilious-looking countenance appearing in front of her bar, demanding to inspect the barrel. Permission was given him, and after searching for some time, he could not find sufficient pieces to make a whole stamp for the good reason that the missing portion was inside the barrel. This was, clearly, to his mind, a gross violation of the revenue laws and visions of prospective fees, traveling expenses &c. loomed up before him.

Putting on his most dignified air, he told Mrs. Schleber he should have to arrest her. This lady, however happens to be a rather muscular woman and she told Dow if he attempted anything of that kind, it would not be many minutes before his face would resemble a freshly plowed field.

High words ensued between the parties accompanied by sundry pushes &c. in which Dow got the worst of it and his departure was a trifle more accelerated than he desired."

In addition to making questionable arrests and snagging a per diem, he was also known to shake down the populace:

"Them Dow Fellers" Again

For some time, Ephraim Dow and his pals have kept more or less quiet but appear to have broken out again and are now in the hands of the law. It seemed that a day or two since the bilious-looking and attenuated frame of Ephraim put in an appearance at Mary Eagan's saloon on Monroe Avenue, telling her that he had come to summon her to appear before Commissioner Husbands. At the time, Mrs. Eagan was too sick to move.

On Wednesday last, he returned in company with Nicholas Krauk and Aderiel E. Webster, and according to the evidence of her daughter, Maggie they told Mrs. Eagan if she would give them $5, they would make the matter all right".

Since he was politically appointed, the newspaper appeared to be looking forward to his departure from office:

"...The public in this part of the country ought to be highly elated that they have such an active, enterprising individual as this Dow, who is always alive and ready to protect their interests, notwithstanding the fact that he costs the taxpayers considerable money in the long run, by hunting up cases that have no foundation to rest on, and taking himself and a whole string of witnesses to Albany, for which he is entitled to draw ten cents a mile and a dollar and a half for each of them, besides other emoluments which could only be obtained by these means. Dow would be an ornament to a community - of human cormorants. The people will be compelled to endure him but a short time longer. He belongs to a political race who's days are numbered".

Can you imagine anything that eloquent, sarcastic and scathing - never mind funny - in USAToday?

Skool Daze

As I teeter on the brink of once again becoming a "stoodint" I can't help but think back on my previous experiences with education.

Even though I was in school back when there were only thirteen stars on the flag, the thing that still stands out most was the excruciating boredom. Not surprisingly, I didn't do all that well in school - I just skated by. I ignored the course work and aced the tests.

I admit it - I was lazy as hell, but if I had a nickel for every time I heard "We KNOW you can do the work...." I'd be typing this on my laptop on my yacht on the Mediterranean. I just wanted to scream "OK, if I know I can do the work, and YOU know I can do the work - WTF is the point of me doing it??? Am I a student or a trained seal?"

The curriculum was cookie-cutter and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, like they were programming robots, not teaching people. Students are individuals, not something to try to stuff into a template.

When I had a teacher who challenged me (there were a couple), or I found the material interesting, I excelled.

The other negative aspect of boredom was that I tended to get in trouble - for lack of anything better to do. Every year between third grade and maybe my sophomore year in high school, my mother got called to the school at least once. (I know, that's probably hard for you to believe...)

If that all isn't bad enough, let's throw one more strike against me into the mix: One of my character faults has always been issues with authority. I never was one to grant respect just because someone had a title, or to do something "because I said so". (Needless to say, Catholic school was NOT a good fit for me....) (Even today, this "flaw" still causes me grief, but I'm completely unrepentant!)

It's only more recently that I began to realize that the one thing they don't teach in school is how to THINK. Time after time, I see people around me -some with a lot more education than I - who are very good at making decisions and giving answers as long as the situation fits neatly into a little preprogrammed box. As soon as things get a little off-kilter, they're lost. They don't know how to really narrow things down, to drill down to what the real issues are and are incapable of original, creative thought.

Maybe that's what I truly didn't like about school - everything was predigested and confined to very narrow parameters. There was no room for originality or creativity.

Oh well, it all worked out in the end.

Even though I really had no direction, I knew in school that I didn't want to sit behind a desk like my dad - I wanted to make things. I focused on my shop classes and Carpentry in vocational school. The housing market was in the toilet when I graduated, so I ended up going in my second-favorite direction: metalworking. For the last thirty years or so, it's paid the bills and been "berry berry good to me". Even now, I see I was right - a desk job would have been sheer misery and my job does allow me a great deal of creative outlet. (Now if I could just do something about my issues with authority and my tendency to get myself in trouble...)

But after thirty years of that, I feel I need fresh challenges again - I'm just sort of sleepwalking through my days.

It's time to reinvent the MCMAWG.

(A few years ago, I thought about going into teaching, but decided I didn't want to be just another hamster in the wheel handing out pre-digested material that conformed to the NYS Board of Regents draconian standards. Too bad, too, because I think I would have liked it - I like working with kids and challenging them to THINK. For what it's worth, my son told me he thought I would have made a good one).