FINDING GEORGE

Unprecedented?

We were watching "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" (a fake anti-tRump news show from ABC. I like to develop my opinions based on fake news). With about 20 minutes to go in the program, George awkwardly announced there was a 'technical problem,' and they were going to break. He never came back. If I can read body language, he was not a happy camper.

For the next 20 minutes, the same handful of commercials ran again and again and again, etc.

Anyone know what happened?

I wonder what the rebroadcast at noon will look like....

RE-POST FROM 2008 (APPROPRIATE TODAY MORE THAN EVER)!

(This may not work because I am sick and should be up in bed, but I did feel it necessary to at least get something posted.) An employee where I used to teach recently filed a complaint about John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. She didn't think it was appropriate to read, so instead of returning it and saying something to the librarian, she initiated The Book Challenge Procedure to try to remove the book from the library. Sad!

This current week through October 4th is Banned Books Week. The concept of banning books is a big No-no in my world! Interestingly, while I am against censorship, there are things I believe should be censored - go figure.

Here's my issue - if a student's parent don't want him or her reading a book, fine, but don't you dare tell the rest of the class what they can or can't read or me what I can or can't teach! I checked one top 100 list of challenged books, and I taught at least 14 of them! I mean Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird???? What was I thinking? Maybe they were okay because no one challenged them. All it takes is one person.

The following ten quotes are to ponder. I didn't create them - I found them. If anyone asks, I will create and post a better look at censorship and find at least ten quotes I would have picked. There are a few good ones here!

(10) "We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind."
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

(9) "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
—Salman Rushdie

(8) “Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.”
—Chuck Palahniuk

(7) "Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."
—Walt Whitman

(6) "Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

(5) “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”
—Robert A. Heinlein

(4) “Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”
—Robert Anton Wilson

(3) “Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”
—Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

(2) "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
—Oscar Wilde

(1) "There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."
—Ray Bradbury

(These were found on Alternative Reel.com)

BLOODY WEDNESDAY!

The first time I donated blood was in late 1966 or early 1967. I was at Basic Training, and we were promised an afternoon off if we donated a pint of blood. Even though today is not 'Tell the Truth Day" (that was yesterday), I will be honest - I did it to get some down time from the rigors of Basic, even if it was only a few hours, and the donation process wasn't that bad.

Pretty quickly, my donation became a regular thing. While I did miss some years along the way for one reason or another, I have given fairly regularly, often two or three times a year.

My next chance to give will be on Wednesday, July 29th, at the Wentworth (NH) Elementary School from 1 p.m. until 6 p.m., which leads to the point of this entry. Please feel free to join me. As a sponsoring Lion's Club member, I will be there pretty much the whole time. Stop by, donate a pint, save some lives, and say 'Hi.'

Please contact me with any questions you may have - I will do my best to answer or find the answer for you.

Thank you!

(By the way, my afternoon off back in the army didn't work quite the way planned. A sergeant found me in my bunk in the barracks and put me to work. Sigh.) 

WHY LEARN ANYTHING?

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." Albert Einstein (and yours truly).

The problem for people is we don't know what we don't know. We think we know all we need to know, but we don't. And because of this, there will always be gaps in our knowledge. As a matter of fact, there are many, many areas in which we are absolutely clueless to our deficiencies, and if someone tries to point that out, they are met with scorn and derision.

Many people's depth of thought stops at their Bumper Sticker Mentality (BSM). When one understands what a BSM is, it is a lot easier to see why 'things' are the way they are today. Thinking is hard work. Accepting a BSM as gospel makes it all so much easier.

Urban Dictionary defines BSM as "An inability to examine an issue in depth. An inability to get beyond the basic thought, which sticks in their heads like a mantra, closing off all other avenues of consideration." Read that again (and again, if necessary) until you understand. (I fear, however, some never will.)

As I may have said before, I have great difficulty answering a 'Yes' or 'No' question. It's rarely that simple; there are manifold conditions and considerations - qualifications, if you will. People see things as a matter of choosing between two options when, in fact, there are many options. From lucidphilosophy.com: "You must be a Republican or Democrat. You are not a Democrat. Therefore, you must be a Republican. The problem is the options are illegitimately limited; you could be [an independent], libertarian, anarchist, or socialist." Even within one party name, there are shades and finer distinctions.

Following an incident in my life several years ago, I did some research and learned about narcissism, malignant narcissism, narcissistic injury, and narcissistic rage. Years later, when tRump was elected, my knowledge came into play. Seeing what I saw, I remember saying that down the road when we see what the country is like under his rule, I would either say, "I told you so" or "I am sorry - you were right, I was wrong."

So today, I say, "I told you so!" but who's listening. tRump has issues - he is a malignant narcissist, and he is destroying the America I thought I once knew. Their BSM ("He says what he thinks," "He's drained the swamp," "He has the business sense to make America great," "He's against everything the Democrats are for," "He's not a politician," "He will change a crooked and rigged system," "Our government needs a strong executive who recognizes the balance of the Constitution," etc., etc.) makes any reasonable discourse impossible. 

"I told you so," but I suspect you will never know why.

HONEY, I MISS YOU!

Following a polite political messaging back-and-forth with a former student and the acknowledgement on my part that some things are open to interpretation, the following popped into my head. I don't remember the exact context, but as part of a poetry unit in a  class somewhere along the  line, I had brought a recording of and the lyrics to Bobby Goldsboro's 1968 song "Honey." 

To more fully appreciate what follows, cut and paste the link and first listen to the song and pay attention to the lyrics (yes, they may move you, and you might want to have some Kleenex (or other brand of facial tissue handy), but they also have been described as 'syrupy' - try not to get sick).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiEY3O-FWk

If you actually listened, everything is pretty straight-forward there, or at least so I thought. 

One day, a student offered the theory that when she had the car accident, she had hit a biker, and when the angels came, it was the Hells Angels, who took her away never to be seen again.

After my initial incredulous response, I began to think about it, and I couldn't say the student was wrong! The neat thing about poetry is there are sometimes interpretations, but they usually exist within parameters. This student was right (to him), and, as I just said, I couldn't deny his possibility. Just wow!

Maybe I will remember other examples in time, but I do remember I love learning things from students.

RANDOM THOUGHTS - PART II

RANDOM THOUGHTS LIST TWO

How fair is it to define someone by something they said or did 40 or 50 years in the past? Does how they’ve grown, who they have become, and what they’ve done since matter more?

If there is a law about pre-funding the USPS retirement system, just reverse the law.

Not a huge deal, but after two years at her job, my daughter is making more than I did as a teacher after 31 years.

As my folks’ passings taught me, enjoy the journey because the destination ain’t so hot!

No matter where you go, there you are.

If I can start charging $50,000 to officiate weddings, all I need to do is one a year.

Because of the news cycle, when something gets uncomfortable, something else comes along to push it out of sight. I am predicting we will have a new hot war before the election!

One. Hundred. And. Twenty. Five. Thousand. Americans. Dead while tRump denied and lied. If anyone still supports him, they are complicit. Many see it. Others never will. One belief is very wrong.

So, maybe it was a test or wake-up call. Suppose the Coronavirus was a truly deadly disease. Where would we be today?

A chance to lead. When ‘only’ 200 people had died, Trump was asked, “So, what do you say Americans who are scared…?” The answer: “I say that you are a terrible reporter, that's what I say. I think it's a very nasty question.”

A new way to eliminate cancer! Stop testing for it! It’s that simple.

One thing I hate is when I am refreshing Facebook and a box shows saying I haven’t finished my post. I still search for an unposted comment. There must be an easier way!

“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” John Morley

Even though they are pretty hokey sometimes, Magnum P.I., Diagnosis Murder, and other such shows are good time passers. After watching the original Magnum P.I., I would love to be Magnum (except for those shorts), but I am afraid I am more like Higgins.

Anyone can pretend to be stupid, but you can’t pretend to be smart. Maybe one really needs to be smart to recognize stupid.

FORGIVE ME, READERS, FOR I HAVE SINNED....

As I was checking out at the grocery store, my eyes fell upon something I haven't seen for at least two years: NECCO Wafers! They're baaack!

I wasn't going to eat the whole sleeve in one sitting, but you know how that goes! The two-ounce package seemed bigger than I remember, but I soldiered on. After all, the serving size is listed as one package. 

There is NO CHOLESTEROL and NO FAT! That's the good news. The bad news is I consumed 56g of carbs, 51 of which were sugar. I rarely eat sugar, so that hurts, but it's a one-time thing! Most of my sugar is from fruits, which, for some reason, converts better than the processed stuff. 

Anyhow, the new wafers are made in Mexico, our neighbor to the south. Not many wafers seemed to have the NECCO logo on them, and some pieces were missing part of the circle - thinking that's a quality control issue. 

From the Spangler Candy website, a few facts: "From the time of their creation, Necco Wafers have been enjoyed all over the world, quite literally. They were carried by soldier during the Civil War. In 1913, explorer Donald MacMillan took Necco Wafers on his Arctic explorations, sharing them with Eskimo children.

Later in the 1930s, two and a half tons of Necco Wafers were taken on an expedition to the South Pole, which amounted to about a pound a week for each person during their two-year stay.

During World War II, the U.S. Government requisitioned a major portion of the production of Necco Wafers. The candy was perfect for shipping to troops overseas since it doesn’t melt and is very portable."