Change

Over the last 200 years or so, the US has changed.  The demographics and needs have changed and as a result, policy has changed.  The change has not always been painless, yet it has had to happen for us to progress.  I am pointing to the unpopular policy of slavery (1860’s) and the equal rights movement of the 1960’s in particular.  Today’s world is more technical than ever before and it will continue to progress.  Never in the history of the US has the television had such an impact on public policy as it has now.  When a person speaks publicly, the impact of those statements has an immediate effect.  What I mean is that just as soon as it is said, there are fifty different “experts” analyzing and criticizing what was said and what was meant and how it impacts what is going on.  These “experts” tend to have more influence with people because we have lost our ability to critically analyze.  If an expert says it is true—despite the fact that all the experts disagree—then it has to be true, depending on your political affiliation.  What happened to the time when people would say “wait…that doesn’t sound right” and we would question their position based on our own critical analysis of the facts.  Sites like Wikipedia and the myriad of blog sites have made inaccurate and generally irrelevant information easily quotable.  I think people need to take everything that is said in any public forum with a grain of salt—regardless of how many experts there are speaking about it—and use our own intelligence to study the subject from a thousand different perspectives, while at the same time keeping an open mind for the possibility that your own opinion may be wrong and then and only then, make an informed opinion.  It really is not rocket science.  The sooner we all learn to disregard the irrelevance and start to again analyze everything, the sooner we can make change happen.  After all the US has been a dynamic state that has affected outcomes and influenced countries worldwide.  May we again be at the forefront of revolution, questioning all policy, and making change happen…and remember, it might hurt a little.

Mad as Hell

The views expressed in this blog are mine and mine alone.  I know some of you do not have the same beliefs that I do, and I apologize in advance if I offend you by them.

Nobody has the same perspective as do I and what is important to me is not necessarily important to others.  I am disillusioned by the political climate and things are bad and getting worse.  I hear people saying how this person broke that part of the economy and this person is responsible for that malfunction.  I am here to say that the economy was on the way down in the late 80’s and completely collapsed in 2009.  This is not any one person’s fault.  I do think that things are going to get much worse than they are now.  Any action to reverse progress made toward repairing the damage suffered in the Greatest Depression (my words) the world has ever had, is going to catalyze into another even deeper depression.  There will be hunger and poverty and polarization like we have never seen.  When we think of polarization, we tend to think of racial division—not so this time.  This time it will be the very rich against the very poor.  We poor people are being backed into a corner and like wild animals, we are only going to be able to take so much before we revolt.  The US civil war was nothing compared to what is coming…we have nothing left to lose.  When you take away every dignity of a man and make him beg like an animal for basic necessities, you run a distinct risk of making that very man you disenchanted into a ferocious beast.  We are mad as hell.  We are mad at the money men clinging tightly to their money (billions in case you were wondering) while all of us working and now, non-working poor are losing our houses, our transportation, our friends, and most of all our dignity while they are living in the lap of luxury.  We are getting sick and tired of the select few that have the (financial) clout to steamroll those of us who don’t.  Policies and laws that benefit the top 2% (wealthy) of the population are not the policies that will help us to recover from this mess.  We need to stop all of the hatred and bigotry and yelling.  The political elite at the top need to stop bickering and look at the people below them.  They need to see that anger and fear that is about to boil over.  They should be scared. 

Speaking out

The US is one of the most culturally diverse nations in the world.  We are the host of the UN and are a pivotal part of the world economy.  We are a God fearing nation and as such should be practicing the creed of the Christian majority—do unto others as you would have done unto you.  We are not doing this.  I am dismayed by the attitudes of some toward gay folks in this country.  This morning I read an article on CNN {http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/28/arkansas.anti.gay.bullying/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn} about an Arkansas school board member that wrote an extremely derogatory message on Facebook.  I am torn about this post and this man’s right to express himself.  Though I strongly believe in a person’s right to express themselves in any forum, if you are in a public elected position—especially where there are children and young people involved—we need to hold them to a higher standard.  Once again, I firmly defend his right to say what he wants—but not as an educator or policy maker.  We all know how the public reacts when other elected officials—Senators or Representatives—have made derogatory statements.  They are held to a position of authority and should be held to that higher standard of conduct.  They were elected to represent all of their constituents regardless of who they are and as such, they should not be making any kind of derogatory remarks.  I believe that if you are an elected official, you should not be speaking in a public forum in such a negative fashion.  If you believe that strongly about the issue, you should not be in that type of position and accordingly, should step down.  Again, I defend the right to speak about anything, anywhere.  The fact that this particular comment came from a simple request by GLAAD to remember those who have committed suicide for anti-gay bullying—in a public forum, makes it even more despicable.  The message was insensitive, inflammatory, and downright crude.  “The only way I will wear a purple shirt is if they {gays} all commit suicide” is not the type of message we should be getting from an educator or policy maker.  We as Americans should be teaching our children tolerance and acceptance.  Instead we have groups of ultra-conservative christian (with a small c) individuals spreading messages of hatred and intolerance, dividing the nation.  We need to step up as a country and do what we have done throughout the entire history of our country and right this wrong.

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again to all of you thanks for reading me and stay tuned for more interesting articles.

Christopher

Crazy Kids or Am I Too Old?

Is it just me or have the kid’s gone crazy?  I look at some of the things my kids and my nephews are doing and try to think back to when I was their ages.  Were we really that bad?  I would say comparatively speaking we were not.  Things were different back then though.  Discipline was a mandatory thing, paddling’s happened at school (hope mom and dad don’t find out), and we had a certain behavioral expectation.  The majority of the time we did not do something we thought we might want to because of what our parents might do to us if we got caught.  We did not have Xbox, PS2, PS3, GB, GBDS, or any of the rest of the alphabet soup to take away and TV was only 3 channels—when we got to watch something besides the news it was a special thing.  So what did they have to work with?  Yup you guessed it…we got spankings, stood in the corner, sent to our rooms (which was a terrible place back then—all we did was sleep in there!!), or were assigned extra chores.  There weren’t any of this “time out” or bad marks…we were the ones that got the bad marks on our butts.  Was that a bad thing?  In retrospect I think not.  We had manners.  I would never have dreamed of cussing out a teacher, or yelling at my mom in the grocery…it just was not done.  The consequences were far too great.  We might lose our precious Saturday morning cartoons or have to stay in our room (you know-the dungeon) all weekend with nothing to do-not even a book!  The other thing we had over them is that we were creative and we were without all those computer games, and game systems, and other nifty electronics we can’t live without today.  We actually had to think of things to do.  One of our favorite things to do when I was a kid (we had a dirt backyard-no grass to cut) we would create mazes in the dirt, complete with safe spots and dead ends or we would build our fantasy houses complete with 2 car garage and swimming pool—and we had books!  Oh my god the places I went as a kid, and without ever leaving my yard.  Kids today have no imagination or creativity short of finding more intricate ways to cut themselves to deal with how bad their life sucks.  That isn’t to say that it was all good for us either, just not as bad as it is today.  Kids today think they have it bad…I have news for them.  They have it way better than we did and yet somehow, we ended up better off for it.

Sleep Cycle

There are some times when I lay down to go to sleep because I am just beat only to lay there and stare at the ceiling for an hour, sometimes more.  I wonder sometimes if it is because my body is just too tired to sleep or if it is because my brain won’t shut up.  There are many times that I get my best story or poetry ideas at that time of the night.  Often I am too tired (or lazy) to climb out of the bed to write it down.  I wonder how many potential best-sellers I have dreamed away.  There are sometimes that the story idea gets so embedded into my conscious that I can’t help but remember it in the morning and when it does, I usually come up with a brilliant poem or interesting story—but alas the majority of the time it is not the case.   I am finding that this is becoming more the norm for me, the more the years pass.  I am not ancient (well I guess according to some people I may seem that way) by any stretch, though the more I age the more I am reminded of that time not too long ago when my own parents went through the same thing.  The good news is that I know eventually I will get to the point where I won’t have any trouble sleeping—anytime, whether it is bed time or not.  I listen to my mom talk sometimes about how tired she is and I have no doubt that she is as tired as she says.  So that is what we all have to look forward to—sitting in front of the TV letting it watch us sleep while we pass into the ether just at the pivotal moment in the show.  Hehe, growing old sucks—but it beats the alternative.

Cross-generational Rift

You know, every now and again I question where I am in my life.  I am nearly…wait…not going there  lol…let’s try it this way, at my age I should be firmly established in a career and working toward saving for my retirement.  The dynamic has changed unfortunately though, and in today’s world we are finding more and more (older) people going back to school to either get new skill which are critical to compete in today’s workforce or because of this blasted recession..nay! depression, causing them to find work in other fields as their’s has become obsolete or was outsourced.   Finding a job has become a job in itself as we can no longer go to a business, ask for an application, and interview at the same time.  Technology has made that process obsolete.  Instead we have become a stack of virtual résumés without faces, only qualifications.  No longer can we sit face to face with a person after filling out an application and schmooze them into giving us a chance.  If we don’t fit into just exactly the parameters of what they are looking for-virtual file 13 for you!  I don’t know how this world is going to recover from this mess or even if we can.  One thing I do know for sure though is that without some sort of education or skill that makes a résumé reader go “ WOW! I want this person”, we are doomed.  I guess where I am going with this is, one need not be discouraged if you are 40 something and have no direction.  There are a ton of us in that bracket who are having to do double duty to get into the tech of the 21^st century as well as try to provide for some sort of future for ourselves.  When I was in high school, we had one computer on the whole campus—remember they were thousands of dollars back then—and it was a DOS machine, TRS80.  In college—the first time—we had a lab of them:  all P1 running DOS as well with 5.25” floppies as our save medium because the hard disks were barely big enough to hold DOS.  Yeah it really was like that.  The point is that because of our lot in life and simple timing, we are caught in a cross-generational rift.  We can get into tech and become successful, but it is going to take much more hard work than the 20 something’s that were born with Microsoft in their teething rings.  Please know that  I am not complaining, I am just blogging here.  I suppose where I had wanted to go with this wasn’t where I needed to go…instead this is what developed.