10 Things We Don’t Want In 2017

December 20, 2016

Think of this as the anti-list

There are plenty of things we could make lists about, and probably will over the next couple of weeks. One of the big ones, though, is the list of things we really don’t want to see in the next year. With everything we’ve been through this year, there’s not much we really want to carry over. In fact, we’re rather selective about anything new that might be coming along. We’re concerned about what might happen over the next 12 months.

The thing about the future, of course, is that it is what we make of it. No one has a lock on what might or might not happen. We can make the next year better if we put forth the effort.

Of course, I’m not sure I have any faith in people putting forth the effort. We don’t exactly have the best track record given the way we’ve behaved over the past 12 months. So, here’s our list of things that absolutely, positively, unquestionably, should not happen in 2017. And if any of them do happen, we’re going to publicly shame whoever is responsible.

The Bottom Five

10. Awkwardly flavored soda. Actually, we don’t need any new soda at all, but I’m sure someone at Coca-Cola or Pepsi will convince executives that they have a can’t miss proposition that scored really well with a test group that has never actually had soda before. The problem with new sodas now is that, having already explored most of the flavors that occur naturally, all that’s left are the mashups one gets by standing at the soda fountain mixing different flavors together in uncertain quantities. While popular among 14-year-old males, these strange mixes are really just bad ideas with mediocre marketing. No more.

9. Cookie mashups. What are we, two-year-olds trapped in a high chair? I swear, half the new snacks we’ve seen this year have to be the products of parents who were trapped at home with their toddler on a rainy Saturday. Oreos with Doritos? No thank you. Honey-dipped cheese sauce? Please, there’s a reason the kid didn’t actually eat that combination. What’s worse is that these new snack combinations are doomed to some of the worst marketing ideas we’ve ever seen. Honestly, Hershey’s, the Snack Patrol? Someone’s been watching too many late-night reruns. Try keeping things simple this next year.

8. Book sequels not written by the original author. I don’t envy book editors whose job it is to publish material that is going to be profitable before it is actually released. The number of great authors is limited and, for better or worse, a number of those who might have penned blockbuster novels are choosing to self-publish instead. There are a number of classic novels that, at least on some level, seem to demand a sequel that the original author never wrote. Once a writer is deceased, however, there are fewer ethical problems with hiring someone else to write the sequel for them. There’s just one problem with that: the sequels stink. In fact, quite often they stink when written by original authors. Let’s just limit the sequels not part of the original literary plan, okay?

7. New social media sites. Nope, don’t need ’em. I don’t care how wonderful the idea seems. Social media has picked its dominant tools. Only Twitter has any chance of being replaced by a newcomer, and that’s only if it captures the fancy of the Great Orange President. New social media applications are dangerous. We sign up for them, find them to be the most boring things ever, and then promptly forget that we signed up for them, leaving the information in our half-finished profiles open to hackers. Making a bad situation worse is the fact that the hacks are so insignificant that they never get reported. As a result, we don’t know that our information has been hacked. So, let’s try going 12 months without signing up for anything new, okay? Give it a try.

6. New photography/art sites. Photographers and artists are so desperate to sell anything to anyone that they’ll jump on every new site that comes along without bothering to think whether there’s really any chance of one site working any better than another. There’s not. People don’t buy art online in significant enough volume for any site to actually boast any success. Of course, part of that could be due to the fact that the creative work being put on these sites isn’t commercially viable in the first place. Still, we really don’t need any more creative sites that do nothing more than waste our time with empty promises.

The Top Five

5. New terrorist organizations. Sorry, we have too many terrorist groups to keep track of already. I don’t give a fuck how niche your religious beliefs might be or how passionate one might be in their zealotry. Just stay home, keep your fucking opinions to yourself, and put up that bomb-making kit before someone gets hurt. Terrorists need to learn that we’re not going to give in because of violence and they’re not going to win any favor by trying to kill everyone on the planet who doesn’t agree with them. We’re tired of this shit. If you’re thinking of starting a new terrorist organization, just go fuck yourself and call it a day.

4. Attacks on civil rights. One of the most disgusting aspects of 2016 has been the severity with which civil rights have been attacked. This nonsense needs to stop right now and shouldn’t be carried over into the next year. If you’re a member of the KKK or any other white supremacy group then feel free to kill yourself. We promise to not mourn your passing. Hate is a blight on this world and you’re doing nothing but making the planet a less tolerable place to live. And don’t give me that shit about those who dislike hate groups being intolerable. Hate is a choice we can no longer accept. If you choose to hate, you need to not be present in the next year.

3. New reality programming. Reality TV has been nothing but disastrous, culminating this year in the election of a reality personality as president. Given that each new reality program inherently tries to do something more absurd than the shows before it, we simply cannot risk anything new over the next year. We aren’t likely to survive anything more ridiculous and dangerous than the Trump administration. This has to stop here. Please. For the sake of all humanity.

2. Celebrating people who have done nothing of value. This goes hand-in-hand with the reality programming, and for the same reason. Our national obsession with making celebrities of people simply because they’re rich has to stop. We don’t need any more Hadids or Jenners or Trumps. This stupid and nonsensical obsession damn-near destroyed democracy this past year and has placed us on the brink of complete destruction. It is time we started celebrating people who actually help society, people who know what it means to actually work rather than just bossing people around and firing them for stupid reasons. Leave this bad habit right here. No more.

1. Ignorance. Come on, we’re entering 2017. We have access to every bit of wisdom ever recorded and we can get that information at any time on our phones. So, why are we, collectively, so fucking stupid? We need to leave the stupidity behind and make a concerted effort to become a more intelligent and better-informed society over the next year. By doing so, we will inherently eliminate many of the problems that have cause 2016 to be such an incredibly horrible and distasteful year. We also would be taking a giant step toward ensuring that our species won’t be exterminated in the next hundred years or so. If we are going to survive, we have to put ignorance and all the problems it creates right here in 2016. There is no place for it in the future.

Just For Fun / Music / PotD

We Can Save The World By Dancing

November 22, 2016

Dancing our blues away makes as much sense as any projected political policies we’ve seen. Can’t hurt to try.

There is an automatic irony to me writing this article. I don’t dance. Not really. I can do the office chair boogie. I can do the dad shuffle. I can do the stand-and-sway if the music is slow. But actually dance? Nah, not going to happen. I don’t even bother watching Dancing With The Stars because it just makes me sad. I was raised Southern Baptist. We weren’t even allowed to watch American Bandstand because it was “a bad influence.” So, without those early dance skills being properly developed, any chance I ever had of being able to dance slipped right out under the front door into the Kansas wind.

I like dancing, though. I think it is artistic and beautiful and does wonderful things for people. I am especially taken by large groups of people dancing. Whether it’s choreographed steps that everyone knows, or a flash mob that’s been rehearsed, there’s something about a large group of people moving together at the same time to the same music that gives me hope.

Stop and think about it. Music provides a central ideal, something around which everyone can agree. Then, there’s cooperation. Some lead, some follow, but everyone’s working together for the greater good. There’s a plan, a choreography laid out in advance that everyone follows. Finally, when the time comes, everyone does their part in the performance and the result is something beautiful.

Now, if we can do that with music, and do it over and over and over again, why can’t we do that with other things such as politics? Same rules and methods apply. We just have to agree on the music.

Movies do a great job of illustrating my point. Dancing solves all the world’s problems. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Shake A Tail Feather

From the original Blues Brothers in 1980, this particular scene proves that a blind man with the right song can bring together an entire community. If you can watch this and not feel better by the end, there’s just something wrong with your soul. Even the little kids get in on the act. If a blind man can generate this kind of cooperation, then maybe there’s hope for Congress. Maybe. If they were all blind.

You Make My Dreams

Okay, so there may not be a for-real flash mob dancing with you as you walk home, but there’s little question that we all feel more like dancing when we’re getting laid, which is exactly what happens in the 2009 movie Days of Summer. The problem is, that whole idea that dancing leads to sex is preposterous. Sex leads to dancing. Happiness leads to dancing. Maybe if we backed off the issues around who is having sex with whom or who is getting married to whom then maybe we’d all be a lot more happy and there’s be animated little birds flying around everywhere.

Fake I.D

The 2011 remake of Footloose bears very little resemblance to the original with Kevin Bacon, but one of the things it gives us is an incredibly wonderful line dancing scene. I’ve never actually tried line dancing. I’m always the one taking pictures of everyone else giving it a whirl. If I could dance, though, it would probably be with something like this. Line dancing is exactly how society should be: everyone on the same page, doing their own thing while working together with everyone else. And it’s fun. We need life to be fun.

https://youtu.be/uwNIMM4qnrI

Twist And Shout

I look at Ferris Bueller’s Day Off now and the first thing that comes to mind is how young everyone was back then. We all were young, once. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost the ability to Twist and Shout, though. We might even sway through a chorus of Danke Schoen. What this portion of the movie tells us, though, is that a) it’s easy to convince the people of Chicago to dance in the middle of the street, and b) dancing is a good distraction when you’re on the verge of really blowing it in life. Dancing puts all the problems on the shelf for a minute, gives us a chance to re-examine things before we proceed. The dancing is critical to the outcome of the movie. Perhaps it’s just as critical to the outcome of life.

Closing Time

This scene from Friends With Benefits shows the power of love as expressed through a flash mob. Stop and think a moment about all the trouble, planning, and coordination that Justin Timberlake’s character had to go through to make a flash mob like this happen in Grand Central Station. If we put that same level of effort into our government, our politics, our social lives, and especially our relationships, then perhaps we’d end up with everyone being best friends. Maybe. I can’t make any promises, but what we’ve been doing the past 50 years certainly hasn’t worked, has it? I’m willing to try something new and a dancing flash mob seems like the perfect way to go.

Now, if you’re still reading this far down the page, thank you. With the non-stop political coverage we’ve had the past several months and the bleakness I’m seeing for the future, it seems to me we need to take an extremely different tact in how we approach things. Am I in denial? Yes, most certainly. Denial is safe for the moment. Denial helps ignore the fact that there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop the impending catastrophe coming on January 20. So, let’s all get together and dance. I think we’ll feel better, even if we’re all in denial.

pop culture / PotD

Our Obsessive Pursuit Of Happiness Makes Us Sad

October 9, 2016

charles i. letbetter - our happiness obsession makes us sad

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. —Mahatma Gandhi

charles i. letbetter - our obsessive pursuit of happiness makes us sad

Our relentless pursuit of happiness is very likely the one thing that is making us unhappy

Our little ones regularly tell me that I’m mean. Typically, that accusation comes when I tell them to go to bed, or don’t let them play with knives, or deny them the fourth cookie. In their view, I am impeding their path to happiness. For all their short little lives, other people have been focused on making them happy: grandparents, teachers, babysitters, etc. They are told in a thousand different ways that their happiness is what matters. Then, Kat and I come along and ruin by insisting that they take a bath, or not play in the litter box, or tell them to stop climbing the walls in the hallway (not kidding). We are so very mean.

I’m rather sure that when Thomas Jefferson included that line about the “pursuit of happiness,” he didn’t realize the level of horror he was unleashing on us a little more than two centuries later. We have come to take his words as a mandate: we must pursuit happiness. We think that we are not being fulfilled as individuals if we are not pursuing happiness. Oh, and by the way, it is our own individual happiness that matters. If your pursuit of happiness interferes with my pursuit of happiness then what you are doing is wrong. This is where our current social thought process has taken us.

Could it be that we have become so incredibly focused on being happy that we’ve lost sight of all the other things in life that matter? Does happiness need to be our highest priority or might there be more to life?

America, The Happy

Such obsessiveness over whether we are happy is apparently a uniquely American thing that doesn’t occur in other societies. Ruth Whippman, an English writer, journalist, and documentarian currently living in California, wrote a rather interesting book, AMERICA THE ANXIOUS: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks. You can get a taste of her book in this article on Vox. Part of the motivation for writing her book was the experience of coming from a society where happiness isn’t given a second thought and being tossed into the heart of a culture that is wholly obsessed with how happy they are. What she notices is that, as hard as we try, we’re really not any happier. In the Vox article she says:

To an outsider, it can sometimes feel as though the entire population has a nationwide standardized happiness exam to take and everyone is frantically cramming the night before to get a good grade. Like a stony-faced “that’s hilarious” after a joke in place of laughter — another mildly unnerving staple of conversation in this country — it appears that somewhere along the line, the joy has been sucked out of American happiness.

Americans are obsessed with being happy, I am convinced, because we somehow see it as part of our national birthright. We look at our lives and if we don’t think we’re happy then, somehow, our country is letting us down. Certainly, the Republican candidate for President whose slogan is “Make America Great Again,” enjoys such ridiculous appeal despite all that is inappropriate about him because what he’s actually saying is, “Make American Happy Again.” People respond to that desire to be happy, even if it denies happiness to others.

Our Entitlement Philosophy

Because we, as Americans feel entitled to being happy, we give that feeling a priority and refuse to accept any other emotion for very long. Sadness is not acceptable. Depression requires medication, as does anxiety. If we are angry then we “have issues.” One who is overly enthusiastic is “out of touch,” but one who is embarrassed or feeling guilty needs to “get in touch with their inner self.” We look at happiness as our diety-delivered right and refuse to accept anything else.

One of the most ridiculous yet widely followed and often quoted statements in history comes from Ayn Rand:

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

Can you see how that self-centered piece of horseshit is guiding the entitlement philosophy of an entire political party? Rand, and those who blindly follow her, put one’s personal happiness as a moral imperative above things such as being kind, helping others, compassion, caring, and empathy. When we become so singularly focused 0n achieving a state of happiness, when our purpose in life is to please ourselves first, we end up with policies that are anti-women because that infringes on the happiness of the men making the laws. If our integrity hinges on an imaginary emotional state of bliss, then we develop hate toward others whose conditions of poverty make us look bad. When we depend on the unachievable as proof of our values, we then question and criticize the values of others.

Creating A Happy Culture

I’m sitting here looking at Little Man’s report card for the first term. He’s in second grade. Back in the cultural stone age of when I went to school, second grade was the last year we received the grossly over-generalized grades of S for satisfactory and U for unsatisfactory. Either we understood the material or we didn’t. No gray area. By contrast, the grading scale for Little Man’s class is as follows:

4 = Exceeding Standards
3 = Meeting Standards
2 = Working Towards Standards
1 = Not Meeting Standards

There are a tremendous number of 4s on this report, which pleases Kat. However, as Little Man was going over the report card with me this past week, he wasn’t happy. “Threes aren’t good enough,” he told me. “Threes mean I’m just the same as everyone else. 4s mean I’m better than most the people in my class.”

“So, three isn’t good enough?” I asked.

“I wish there was a 5 to show that I’m the best,” he answered. “That would really make me happy.”

Good god, we’re raising an over-achiever. Yet, this is how Little Man defines whether or not he is happy. S for satisfactory would never be enough for him. Exceeding standards isn’t enough for him. This social culture has convinced him that he needs to be on top, leaving everyone else behind, in order to be happy. The kid is likely in for a world of disappointment. Yet, if he demonstrated any lesser amount of determination then he would be labeled as an underachiever and probably considered uncooperative.

The Curse of Mindful Empowerment

In the world of creating happiness, there are two buzz words that come up a lot. One is empowerment, the other is mindfulness. On their own, both words can have some really positive meaning. Yet, as we’ve taken them to become significant parts of our push to find what makes us happy, we might have taken both words a little too far. I like what Ms. Whippman says about empowerment:

As a rule, “empowerment” appears to be the consolation prize for those of us who will never have any actual power, and you can safely assume that no one in any position of genuine authority will be joining in. Creating a Tumblr of photos of your post–C-section wobbling and scarred naked stomach? Empowering! Creating a Tumblr of photos of your post-prostate surgery rectum? Not so much, senator.

Mindfulness requires being completely focused on whatever one is doing right at this moment. For example, if I was fully mindful, I would be totally consumed with writing the article and probably miss the fact that I have water boiling on the stove. Yet, the Mindfulness movement is so large that it has even made the cover of TIME (January, 2014). Should one make a trip to mindfulness.org, the home base of all things mindful, one sees articles such as The 7 Qualities of Mindfulness Trained in the Body Scan and Take a Mindful Hike. Here, happiness comes through hyper-attentiveness on a specific object or thought, not letting the mind wander, and thereby avoiding all things negative. That sentence is an over-simplification, of course, but again it is pushing one to focus on themselves to the exclusion of other things and other people around them.

I’m not anti-self-help, mind you. Rather, I think that when we improve ourselves it should be so that we are better able to help others and our community. Society only works when we are involved outside ourselves.

Going About This The Wrong Way

Happiness is elusive. To the extent that we spend all our time, all our motivation, in the pursuit of a condition we often cannot even define, we end up making our lives miserable. Gallup does an annual Positive Emotions Survey that essentially matters how happy people are. They poll adults in 140 countries and ask the following questions:

• Did you feel well-rested yesterday?
• Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?
• Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?
• Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?

With all the effort Americans put into being happy, one might be tempted to think that we’re at the top of the list. We’re not. The US isn’t even in the top ten. Want to know who is the happiest? People in these countries, scale based on 100 being the happiest:

Paraguay 84
Guatemala 83
Honduras 83
Uzbekistan 83
Ecuador 83
El Salvador 82
Indonesia 82
Costa Rica 81
Uruguay 81
Colombia 81
Switzerland 81

One doesn’t need to look long to realize that none of the countries listed are likely to be engaged in things like empowerment and mindfulness. They’re not doing yoga and attending seminars on How To Be A Better You. Yet, they are consistent, year after year, happier than we are. We’re still in the top 25, mind you, but that people in lesser industrialized countries with fewer opportunities, higher unemployment, and lower wages would still be happier than we are should give us a hint that we’re probably going about this the wrong way.

Perhaps Happy Isn’t What We Need

One of the lessons I learned from going to church every waking moment of my youth is that no one promises us happiness. In fact, we’re pretty much assured that happiness isn’t going to happen all that often. If Poppa were sitting here with me this morning, and perhaps he is, he would likely use this scripture to make his point:

Philippians 4:11-13New International Version (NIV)

¹¹I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹²I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³I can do all this through him who gives me strength. [Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.]

Look back up at the questions asked for the Positive Emotions Index. Did you sleep well? The question isn’t whether you slept as long as you want. Neither does it involve the type of bedding on which one sleeps. Simply sleeping well is sufficient and being content with that is more likely to leave us feeling satisfied. Were you treated with respect all day yesterday? That’s going to change from day to day and perhaps even moment to moment. Yet, to the degree we can find contentedness, not happiness, in our situation, regardless of how others treat us, we are more likely to feel better about ourselves.

Now, look what happens when we focus questions outward. Did you help someone else smile or laugh today? Chances are, if you helped someone smile, you were probably smiling also. It is easier to feel good when we are helping others feel good. Did you teach someone something new and interesting today? Does not improving someone else’s life not improve your own at the same time? When we are content, we might just increase our happiness because contentedness allows us to focus outward rather than inward.

We Are Not Cocoons

One would think that the pursuit of happiness is a virtue, a positive character trait to be admired. Unfortunately, Americans, in their obsession to find happiness at any cost, have made that pursuit negative. Too often, our happiness comes at the expense of others. We focus so fully on what we think might make us feel better that we lose sight of what we could do to make the world feel better.

If we were some type of larvae that lives in a cocoon with no interaction with or obligation to the outside world, then sure, focusing on our own happiness might be totally appropriate. We do not live in cocoons, though. We are part of a vibrant, loud, emotional, and needy society. When we focus on our own happiness to the exclusion of those around us, we ultimately do harm to the whole.

Instead, perhaps we should work more to find contentedness and focus our intentions and actions on helping others. Something tells me that when we stop pursuing happiness so hard it might just show up on its own.

pop culture / PotD

Trolls And How To Be Them

February 9, 2016

Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, which is an ancient way of saying ‘Don’t feed the trolls.’—Anonymous

The Internet is full of disgusting, disagreeable creatures that lurk in dark shadows and say stupid things. These are Trolls. We all flirt with them.

Somewhere, well back into the mid-1960s, my parents gave me a paperback book with a yellow cover. I still remember the event clearly. We were on our way to visit one of my aunts and, presumably, they gave me the book to keep me quiet and out of the way. The trick worked. I can only assume now that we were visiting my aunt for rather serious reasons. She was the single mother of five, her husband having abandoned her when the youngest was but a few months old. Single moms were rare back then, and the challenges she faced were significant. We visited often, and I would assume now that those visits were not necessarily social, but more to help with various issues. Therefore, keeping me quiet and out of the way was beneficial.

The short title of the book is Goops and How To Be Them by Gelett Burgess. The complete title, though, is: Goops and How To Be Them: A Manual of Manners for Polite Infants Inculcating Many Juvenile Virtues Both By Precept and Example, With Ninety Drawings. Yes, the title is almost as long as the book itself. First published in 1900, there can be an occasional challenge in how some words are defined. For example, when he uses the term “infants,” he’s referring to any child not yet in school. The book is meant to be humorous, to be sure. After all, this is the same person who gave us that poem about a purple cow. Yet, the manners he prescribes are timeless. The book starts like this:

Let me introduce a Race
Void of Beauty and of Grace,
Extraordinary Creatures
With a Paucity of Features.
Though their Forms are fashioned ill,
They have Manners stranger still;
For in Rudeness they’re Precocious,
They’re Atrocious, they’re Ferocious
Yet you’ll learn, if you are Bright
Politeness from the Impolite.
When you’ve finished with the Book,
At your Conduct take a Look;
Ask yourself, upon the Spot,
Are you Goopy or are you Not?
For, although it’s Fun to See them
It is Terrible to Be them!

The book was out of print for several years, so I was not able to give a copy to my own boys. Thankfully, a 2014 reprint is now for sale and I’m thinking of a certain seven-year-old who might well benefit from having a personal copy of this particular volume. The lessons truly are well worth the effort.

Yet, as I look back over the title now, considering where and what we are as a society so deeply embedded in digital content and social media, I wonder if Burgess, were he alive today, might re-work the title as Trolls and How To Be Them. After all, or so it would seem, Internet trolls and Goops would have a great deal in common. In fact, it may well be that the infantile Goops grow up to be the adolescent trolls and, no matter their age, never seem to grow beyond that stage of development. While their adult-sized bodies may be large and misshaped, trolls never really grow up. They never assume responsibility, they don’t take care of their own business because they’re too concerned about everyone else’s, and they never socialize with friends because even trolls don’t like being around other trolls. They’re Goops, to be sure, just in larger bodies.

I apologize for not writing this next section in verse, something at which Burgess was especially talented, but let’s consider for a moment some of the ways Goops and trolls are alike.

They are aggressive and rude. Goops pull on little girls curls, and trolls enjoy making fun of women’s features in general, body shaming every aspect bust especially focusing on faces, breasts, and hips.
Goops and trolls go out of their way to create trouble. Goops might trip someone walking or push them in the mud. Trolls hurl verbal mud at the nicest of people and then berate them for being “dirty.”
Both Goops and trolls enjoy their ignorance. Goops tear up books and pay no attention to teachers. Trolls delight in spreading rumor and innuendo without bothering to check their facts and are consistently unable to provide a reliable source to back up their comments.
Neither are respectful of authority. Goops are disobedient and don’t listen to their parents. Trolls don’t care about community standards and challenge administrators and managers charged with moderating comments. Trolls also enjoy attacking anyone in a position of authority, from the President or Prime Minister to the manager of the local burger joint.
They think only of themselves and the things that bring them pleasure. Goops are lazy, never helpful, and want everything done for them. Trolls provide no benefit and tear people down rather than build them up. Trolls never have anything positive to say.

Trolls are nasty creatures and I am constantly astonished at how they are tolerated in places they don’t belong. You may or may not have noticed that I don’t provide for commenting on any of my articles. Goops and trolls are a large part of why that feature is not present here. I struggle to understand why it is present on things such as news stories or magazine articles. Why are comments necessary at all? If one has a legitimate disagreement, then make appropriate contact through appropriate channels. Trolling comments serve no beneficial purpose at all.

Burgess created Goops as an object lesson. He featured them in a comic strip for about a year and I do desperately wish that those would make a renewed appearance. I think we might learn a lot about how we should behave. Perhaps, just maybe, they might teach us how to not be trolls.

Current Issues / PotD

Still Chasing A Dream

January 18, 2016

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Despite all the advances, racism is still just as alive and well in America as it was in 1964

I hardly know where to start this morning. I have been thinking for the past week about what I would write this morning, and all that has done is left me angry that I should need to write anything specific at all. Here we are at yet another Martin Luther King, Jr. day, and I would be hard pressed to define any substantial way in which matters of racism have improved. There are days when I wonder if we’ve actually moved backward.

When President Obama took office in 2009, it was widely assumed that we had entered a post-racial era; we must be beyond racism for us to elect a black president. What the past eight years has shown us, though, is a very different picture. The hate and animosity hurled toward the president, not just in secret but openly and defiantly, has been unprecedented. Over the past eight years, we have seen more public demonstrations of hate toward people of color, any color, than since the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

Over the past eight years, we have come to realize that not only are our cities and our schools still segregated in very real ways, but that the playing field of opportunity is tilted against people of color. There is, in far too many cities and states, a different system of justice for people of color than what exists for whites. The Ku Klux Klan has been allowed to return and the prevalence of armed neo-nazi groups has been steadily on the rise.

There is no justification for such blatant racism. There is no excuse. I’m tired of hearing people start a sentence with “I’m not racist,” and then turn right around and follow that with some form of slander against people of color. I’m weary of having people tell me they’re reluctant to go into certain parts of town because of the number of blacks present. I’m exhausted from seeing white people, especially white people of affluence, go out of their way to avoid coming into contact not only with those whose skin is a different color,but whose religion requires a different manner of dress.

One of the most public, and disgusting slights came just this past week when the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for their annual awards; you know, the ones most commonly referred to as the Oscars. While the Academy is just fine having a black person host the show (Chris Rock), and utilizing people of color as presenters, for the second year in a row every last one of the nominees for major awards is white. There are no blacks up for best actor or actress. There is no one of Asian ancestry nominated in a supporting role. There is no one of Hispanic or Persian heritage anywhere on the list.

What frustrates me the most is that white people just don’t seem to understand how very racist they are. Bring up the subject and they are quick to say something like, “I have black friends,” or “my next-door neighbor is black,” or “I have black employees.” Apparently, too many white people fail to see how condescending their actions are, how they speak to and treat people of color differently than they do other white people.

Racism isn’t something we can just legislate away. Racism is an attitude, a belief system built upon the principle that one group of people are better than another simply because of the pigmentation of their skin. Eliminating racism means doing away with that belief system that has been ingrained within the human race for millennia.

Here’s the rub: scientifically, there is no such thing as race. There is no differentiation of species that make humans from the African continent any different from humans in Asia. Humans in South America are exactly the same as those in North America. Any difference in pigmentation is an adaptive trait based upon the climate and has absolutely no bearing on the species at all. From a scientific perspective, race doesn’t exist; it is all in our stupid little heads.

Yet, here we are, more than 50 years after the fact, still chasing a dream that is rooted in common sense and plain decency. We like to tout our progress while completely ignoring our many failings. We have set aside today to celebrate a dream, but we refuse to allow that dream to become reality. How can we call today a holiday when the person for whom it is named is just as likely to be arrested on false charges today as he was in 1964? This is no dream. This is a nightmare.

Don’t ask me for a solution when the solution is you. The solution is each of us. I can only work on myself. I might try to hold immediate members of my family accountable, but ultimately the decision is one we each make for ourselves. Racism isn’t an accident and until we universally adjust our attitudes the dream can never become reality.

Art / PotD

Prisoner Of None

November 7, 2015

charles i. letbetter - Prisoner Of Nothing

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.—Henri Matisse

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Here we are at the end of what I hope has been an interesting week. This is one of those times, yet again, when I could easily continue along the theme, but won’t for fear of boring you. In that regard, I am breaking the rule Monsieur Matisse set for not being a prisoner. I fear I am a prisoner of many things, including the hit count for these pages. As we move from week to week, the photos I select are not always the ones I could/should be most excited about sharing, but more often than not are those I think are most likely to have the greatest mass appeal. Sadly, this is a prison of my own making, so only I can destroy it.

We become prisoners easily. We bind ourselves to a specific style, to the rules of that style, to the marketing necessities of a medium, to the limits of what displays well online, to whatever might be commercially appealing, to the opinions of our friends and colleagues, to the demands of family, to the strictures of a specific religion, to the censorship of an art association or publication, to the expectations of a specific genre, to the desires of models, to the demands of publishers and editors, and on and on until we have so thoroughly imprisoned ourselves that we might as well be wearing jail stripes, or at least place them over our work.

Not that we ever intend to become a prisoner. I’ve known of no one with an artistic bent who started out saying they would do nothing that did not follow the rules. I suppose, given the immensity of humanity that such a person exists, but most artists claim they want to become rule breakers, to stretch the boundaries of their chosen medium, or of art in general. Artists desire to be anarchists in some sense, to upset society in such a way as to overturn the present hierarchy. Yet, so few actually accomplish that feat. At the first sign of resistance, we play along and become a prisoner.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]One of the most poignant quotes from Henri Matisse is this:

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Indeed, even from the very beginning, the artist refused to conform to the “rules” of art. He failed the exam for the first art school to which he applied. He was fiercely criticized and derided his entire career. His works were often hung in poor locations where they would be least likely to be noticed, and allegedly were even hung upside down on more than one occasion. When Matisse’s first Fauvist works were exhibited in Paris, people actually laughed while standing in front of the paintings. Not being a prisoner often means not giving in to popularity.

Even one of his closest friends and frequent house guests, Pablo Picasso, was critical of Matisse’s work. Picasso and his friends actually threw suction-cup darts at Matisse’s Portrait of Marguerite (which Picasso had obtained in a trade for his own Pitcher, Bowl and Lemon). When Matisse was contracted for the stained glass windows at Chapelle du Rosaire, Picasso allegedly said that it would have been more appropriate for Matisse to have designed a brothel.

Not being a prisoner sometimes comes at a severe price. If there is a lesson to be learned from this week of discussing Matisse it is that one must be true only to their own artistic vision; everything and everyone else is a sideline spectator who distracts and detracts from the art. As surely as we imprison ourselves, we can also break ourselves free. Do not be a prisoner.[/one_half_last]

Art / PotD / Social Commentary

Love, Everyone

October 3, 2015

Welcome Home (2013)

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.—Buddha

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What’s wrong with people? I look through the news this morning and all I see is hate. Republicans hate democrats. This religion hates that religion and both hate anyone who disagrees with them. White hates black, black hates white, and they both hate brown. If I were to do a quick, informal estimation, which is exactly what I’m doing right this moment, I would say that roughly 80% of what has been tossed at me this morning ultimately contains a hateful message. Where is the love? Where is the empathy? Where is any attempt at actually wanting to get along with other people.

Here’s the great paradox of the 21st century: we’re willing to spend billions of dollars (collectively) looking for love, trying to find love, improving ourselves so that we’re more lovable, but we don’t do a damn thing toward actually loving other people. We are as selfish about love as we are everything else in our lives. We want it all to come to us, knock on our door, overwhelm us with emotional goodies, and reaffirm our sense of how valuable we are to the world. We define love not as something we feel toward other people, but by the quantity of warm fuzzies other people give to us.

In other words: we don’t have a fucking clue. For all the talk about love, we fail to realize that love is an act of giving, not an act of receiving. Love is not something that happens to you, but something you distribute to others. Love is not doing something based on what you feel, but what you feel based on what you’ve done. Love is active, not passive. Love is not something to be found, but something we create, from the center of our being, so that we might give it to someone else. Love is not narrowly limited to a familial relationship, but an over-arching sense of inclusiveness and responsibility to the greater good of humanity.

Love holds no bias, nor fear, but includes everyone.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]So, we are, and have been for a while, at this point in the United States where we have had more mass shootings (where more than four people are shot), than there have been days in the year. We foolishly ask why this keeps happening. Some want bans on weapons. Some want tighter control on those with diagnosed mental disorders. Some want everything locked down and stored in a box where no one can get to it. None of those are solutions. We cannot solve with legislation what was not caused by government in the first place. There is only one reason we keep shooting ourselves: we’ve forgotten how to love.

It was a mere 45-50 years ago that we, my generation and those just older than us, were all about peace, and love, and happiness. We were sure that we could change the world with love, and ultimately we were correct, but we didn’t see it in the way we thought we would see it. We thought love would give us things, take away responsibility, make life more relaxed. What we failed to realize is that love creates responsibility and when we fail that responsibility, we fail love. Love doesn’t just chug along like a toy train circling the Christmas tree. Love requires maintenance, effort, and a completely selfless attitude.

Where is the American society failing? Don’t blame government, Republican orDemocrat. Don’t blame religions, present or absent. Don’t blame race or economics. Blame the total and complete absence of love. We’ve stopped loving, we’ve stopped teaching our children to love, and we’ve stopped letting love be the guide by which we live our lives. In a world where we’ve all but thrown love out the window, is it any wonder that society has gone to hell in a handbasket?

Love, everyone. You won’t learn how until you try.[/one_half_last]

PotD / Social Commentary

Education

September 18, 2015

Think A Minute (2013)

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.—James A. Baldwin

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]My mother was a teacher in more ways than one. Yes, there are a few people out there who endured, and survived, the trials and tribulations of being in her classroom. She didn’t stop teaching when she walked out of the classroom, though. Education, she believed, was something that began the moment one woke up of the morning and didn’t end until one was unconscious at night. She saw the potential for making every moment a teaching moment, and she wasn’t going to let one’s education be incomplete.

Mom always said she was 5′ 2″ tall. I’m sure she was at one young point in her life. Most of my life she was about an inch shorter than that, and she continued shrinking. That never stopped her, though. She couldn’t be bullied, by administration, student, or parent. To cross her as an adult meant being on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing that damn-near drew blood. To cross her as a child meant bending over, grabbing your ankles, and being thankful her arthritis prevented her from swinging that paddle as strongly as she might. In her mind, the first thing one needed in an education was discipline and respect. One didn’t begin learning until those two things were present.

At the same time, though, Mother could be incredibly compassionate. Being the preacher’s wife in a small town meant she usually knew when a student’s family was struggling. School policy prevented her from helping a child directly, but she would find a way to make sure a child had food at home, or clean clothes, or in at least one case light by which to read. Hugs were something she handed out readily, even long after one left her classroom. After school tutoring wasn’t’ part of a program; it was just something she did as student’s had need.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Mom would not have done well in today’s schools. She understood that an education isn’t just information one learns to regurgitate on command, but how we learn to take that information and improve our lives and the lives of others. She hated standardized tests because she knew that people can’t, and shouldn’t, be standardized and neither can the education system that teaches us. She taught more by living than by lecturing. She set an example for her students that was worth following.

I look now at how schools have changed and want to cry. We have so woefully underfunded our schools that teachers show up to find absolutely no resources in their classrooms, not even textbooks or dry erase markers. We totally misunderstand the point of education when we think test scores are a sufficient or accurate measure of learning and/or teacher adequacy. Library shelves sit empty because there’s no money for books. We wonder why there’s a teacher shortage in almost every state, not realizing that by the time teachers pay for all their supplies, books for their classrooms, and materials for students, they’re not longer making a living wage!

I’m glad that the little ones can now come home and watch re-runs of Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood on Netflix. They are thoroughly enthralled as they pick up the values education that are no longer part of the school curriculum. Education for them is a very different experience than it was for my sons, and almost unrecognizable compared to my experience. That we have allowed the situation to deteriorate is inexcusable and everyone is at fault. We have no education system when we refuse to learn. Even Mother couldn’t solve that problem. [/one_half_last]

PotD

Casual

May 14, 2015

The Earliest Morning (2010)

“I sipped my own coffee, heavy on the sugar and cream, trying to make up for the late work the night before. Caffeine and sugar, the two basic food groups.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton, Cerulean Sins

[one_half padding=”4px 8px 0 4px”]I find it interesting how different drinks impose a social setting upon a situation. Champagne is obviously the most formal, being reserved for truly special occasions. Wine comes next, with the vintage and type determining just how uptight and restrictive the conversation should be. Tea, English style, probably comes next; I find it impossible to sip from china cups without extending my pinky. Everything else is more casual, beer being at the bottom of the list with its perpetual “I don’t give a fuck” attitude.

Coffee holds a unique place in that list, though, not truly formal even when served in the best of china cups, but not quite as insouciant as cocktails. There’s an implied comfortableness around coffee that is friendly, perhaps even neighborly, but still leaves room for serious conversation. We serve coffee at important meetings to help everyone relax and focus on the task at hand. We serve coffee after dinner, though, to reduce the formality of the evening and introduce a period of more relaxed conversation. Coffee’s ability to bridge social gaps is invaluable.

Where coffee may be the most useful, though, is in those moments where one is sitting with someone else and you don’t know quite what to say. Maybe you’re strangers thrust awkwardly together at a party. Perhaps you’re lovers who are not quite sure of the next step in your relationship. A parent and adult child sitting at a table trying to figure out how to breach that painful topic no one wants to discuss. Coffee is perfect for those moments, sitting there with a warm cup or mug between your hands, staring down into the darkness, maybe stirring it with a spoon just so there’s something making noise. Coffee is patient. Coffee allows you the time you need to find just the right words.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 8px”]For years, I’ve put coffee in the middle of meeting new people. I consider it a test of character, among other things. How a person orders their coffee says a lot about them, I think. Enough so that we can put them into groups.

People who are serious about business tend to drink their coffee black and the busiest of people, I’ve noticed, order an Americano so it’s not quite as hot and easier to drink on the run. These people are not going to have long conversations so get to the point.

When someone orders extra shots in their drink they’re almost certainly night owls, or at the very least people who forgo sleep for either business or pleasure. The downside is that keeping their attention may be difficult.

Occasionally I’ll come across someone who is fussy as hell about how their coffee is prepared, giving the barista special instructions. Be careful around those people; they’re not so much perfectionists as they are just difficult to please.

People who add a lot of sugar and flavoring, though, are more easy-going, more socially oriented, and almost never in a hurry. Find a comfy chair and settle down, these people are ready to talk.

In many ways, coffee is the great equalizer of drinks, enjoyable regardless of one’s social or economic status and generally accessible even when nothing else is appropriate. Coffee doesn’t require a certain style of dress, or being dressed at all for that matter (just be careful about spills), and there’s no requirement for a given manner of speech. Coffee invites everyone to relax and be themselves, and that is invaluable.[/one_half_last]

PotD / Social Commentary

The Joys of Coffee

May 10, 2015

At The Coffee Shop (2011)

If it wasn’t for the coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever. -David Letterman

[one_half padding=”4px 8px 0 4px”]Yes, I’m well aware that today is Mother’s Day in the US and yes I’ve shot enough mothers and children to have given that the theme for the whole week. That’s rather crowded territory today, though, and if you’re sitting on your computer or mobile device reading this then you’re obviously not spending time with your mother, for reasons we won’t discuss, so we decided to go a very different direction for this week and talk about something that is near and dear to my own heart: Coffee.

I have been drinking coffee since I was 14. Granted, I didn’t drink as much of it then as I do now, and I tended to dump loads of sugar and milk in it until Poppa caught me and said if I were going to drink the stuff I had to drink it straight. I think he was hoping that would put me off and that I’d stop, but it didn’t. I learned to drink it black and enjoy the flavor of the bean itself, not all the flavor and garbage dumped on top. To this day, I fail to understand the fascination with lattes and cappuccinos and other fancy coffee-based drinks. I suppose there’s nothing wrong if you really like all that sweetness and confection actually in your coffee. I prefer my coffee black, a bold roast if you please, something of moderate acidity.

Coffee drinking has taken a lot of heat over the years (pardon the pun). I was told it would stunt my growth, that it would damage my kidneys, and that it could lead to more dangerous addictions (yes, a dear old church lady actually told me that). Some religions forbid the drinking of coffee because of its caffeine (they’d rather their members not be too alert). Like anything else we try to enjoy, there’s always someone right there waiting to tell us we shouldn’t. We tend to ignore those people.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 8px”]Instead, we prefer to consider facts that say things like:

Coffee is the biggest source of antioxidants in the Western diet
A single cup of coffee contains 11% of the daily recommended amount of Riboflavin (vitamin B2), 6% of Pantothenic Acid (vitamin B5), 3% of Manganese and Potassium, and 2% of Niacin and Magnesium.
Drinking coffee can increase your metabolism 3 to 11%.
Coffee drinkers are up to 65% less likely to get Alzheimer’s Disease.
People who drink four cups of coffee a day are 80% less likely to develop cirrhosis.

What may be most compelling about coffee in today’s society, though, is its qualities as an object of social construct. Coffee shops have become the meeting place for everything from first dates to important business meetings. Today’s picture, made somewhat humorous by the expressions on the men’s faces, is an example of coffee’s social attraction. A large storm had just swept through the area, flooding streets and knocking out power. Anyone in the neighborhood when the storm hit was just stuck. There was no getting out. Where did they go? The coffee shop. Their large carafes of coffee were already full and an honor box let patrons pay without needing a cash register. The coffee shop offered comfort, safety, friendship. and a place to pretend to get work done.

So here’s to coffee, the good and bad and everything else we’ll talk about this week. Now, put down your phone and go talk to your mother. Maybe over a cup of coffee.[/one_half_last]

We Can Save The World By Dancing