Self Defense?

My lovely wife was Skyping with my daughter today. The latter, of the “I think that I will jump out of this perfectly good airplane last September (which was described in the “Girls Gone Wild” blog of the same month)”, has been named a finalist for a scholarship that will allow her to go abroad for school for a year. This is all a good thing. It will put her into contact with people who are on the front lines of fighting human trafficking. It will broaden her horizons in many good and beneficial ways.

It also means that it puts her outside of mom and dad’s ability to do much in the way of protection. Not that that ability is available today but it is easier to lie to ourselves when she is in the same state that we are in. And let’s be honest, while the government is currently stable where she is going, some of its neighbors are experiencing violent upheaval and turmoil. (No she is not going to Illinois or Minnesota.)

Preparations are going on even as we speak. She is learning the language slowly but surely. I have encouraged her to learn the following phrase in all of the local dialects: “My father will hunt you down like a dog.” I have a map of all of the strategic targets in country and have been shopping at “Cruise Missiles R Us” in hopes of picking up some scratch and dent from the whole Libyan thing. I know that these jokes are just an attempt to soften the knowledge that I can’t control these events, but I do what I can do.

It is hard not to give “helpful” advice. I do gain comfort knowing that Grace’s friends, good friends, and significant other feel the same way. During spring break, Grace was taken to a self-defense class. While passing through greater Ingalls on the way back to school, these new founds skills were being demonstrated for Bev and I in our living room. Things were going well. She was smacking down her “attacker” with great ease, and seemed to be gaining confidence with each take down. When suddenly for some inexplicable reason, I started channeling my inner Cato (think Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther) and took off running as hard as I could at Grace across the room, flailing my arms, yelling like a mad man and threw her to the ground. No fancy judo moves to pull out on dad (maybe because she was laughing so hard). There was still work to be done.

If you are having trouble imagining it, watch the following Pink Panther clip. It is a pretty accurate re-enactment.

All of that chaos, all of that struggle, it can’t be escaped. It is going to happen. Clouseau ordered his life to have it happen. “Cato, when I lay down for bed attack me so that I may prepare for any danger that comes my way.” I find that I order my life the same way. As ridiculous as it looks and is, I will do the same thing this fall. I will tell my inner Cato to help me prepare for all of the danger that may come Grace’s way. I will lose much sleep as the rooms of my mind are turned over and over; grappling with every eventuality.

I do all of this when what I say that I want peace of mind. I say that I want my daughter’s independence. I say that I want her to pursue her call. That is the only way she will be who she can be. I say. I say. I say.

Cato, take the night off.  It’s all in self defense.

Take care

Roger

Do dogs go to heaven?

Do dogs go to heaven?
 
That's what you get you get when you ask the high school Sunday school class what topics they want to cover.  The times we had asked them that question the previous two weeks, they all looked at the floor and had that deadened silence that the wary emit in times of stress. So as a teacher of extraordinary skills, I used the forced post-it note on the wall approach. Then, we found that they wanted to talk about college, high school, and friends. Remembering that it was Sunday school, prayer and forgiveness got a couple of votes.  Someone in a clever test to see if the Sunday school teacher was sincere about wanting to let the kids pick the topic posted "do dogs go to heaven?".
 
Snickers and chuckles went around the room. As a teacher of this great group, I was sincere about letting them choose the topics. So "do dogs go to heaven" made the cut for the voting. It made the voting round. In fact it got more votes than "who is Jesus".  The masses had spoken and I have committed to lead a class on it. Teasers have been dropped over the past four weeks. "Don't miss class in a few weeks because we are going to discuss heaven bound dogs."
 
In two weeks the topic the high school Sunday school class at Bridgeway will ponder this question. This blog is the first shot at it.
 
In an effort to learn about this issue, I went to the place I go for all of my theological knowledge. Google returned 1.5 million hits for “do dogs go to heaven.”  For perspective, “Japan nuclear crisis” generated 15 million hits. But really 1.5 million hits point to a real concern over the issue.
 
As you can imagine, as with any good religious argument, the positions are all over the place. Of course dogs (and cats for the felinists) go to heaven because only dogs love us unconditionally. No, they don’t go to heaven because they don’t have souls. The middle ground is that dogs go to dog heaven but don’t get to hang out with us. Poor Shaggy and Scooby, if two beings deserved to spend eternity together it is those two. The coolest entry I found was about Christians who were sure that their dogs were soulless and not going to heaven and in response were making plans to have their dogs taken care of after the rapture. What a good use for all of the atheists? After they get all of the driverless cars and pilotless planes pulled over and landed safely they can feed the dogs. I’ll leave a key under the “welcome” mat. There’s some beer in the fridge. Help yourself.
 
I really don’t know where I come down on this issue. I have owned my fair share of dogs. I have cried over their loss. Dead dog movies and books make me cry like a baby; Old Yeller, and Where the Red Fern Grows are my two favorites. In the end, I think that I have never loved a dog enough to be concerned about that question. I know that makes me a bad person in some people’s eyes. I would agree with you. So while that is my position, I can see why, if you love your dog more than I just confessed to, you want dogs to be heaven bound.
 
Rather than “do dogs go to heaven?” the question that I hear is “who is God?” Looking through the glass dimly, people have long used who gets into heaven as a descriptor of God. Only the good get into heaven – God is a God of justice. Only those who declare Christ as savior – God is fair; he plays by his rules. Everybody gets in – God is a God of mercy. My dog gets in – God really loves me and wants me to be happy. My neighbor’s dog who barked incessantly gets in – there really was a purgatory.
 
I think in the end I leave it to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 32 – 55. Where after several verses, he calls it all a mystery, and I usually say “huh?”
 
Wouldn’t it be funny if the answer had been in the bible all along? We just didn’t know that Jesus was dyslexic. “My God who are in heaven. Holy be your name.
 
Who would name their dog Holy?
 
Take care.
 
Roger
 
 

Socks by any other name would smell as sweet?

Socks by any other name would smell as sweet.

Wednesday morning was a sobering one for me. I was hurrying around getting ready for work, and was paying the price for procrastinating putting my cloths away from last weekend’s laundry. It usually works fine; which is why I wait. Actually it only works fine until Hugo and Henry our two Jack Russell Terriers break into the utility room and try to mark all of the clean cloths.  But just like they refuse to learn house breaking, I refuse to learn that procrastination has a down side.

No, I didn’t put on a “marked” shirt and wear it all day. No, my supply of matching socks had ran out in the closet, so off I go to the laundry room. I find a good pair that match and won’t embarrass me when I sit down. That is when everything went to heck in a laundry basket. I went ahead getting ready for work. I put two pieces of bread in the toaster and headed off to the bedroom in my bare to put on my socks and shoes. This would never have happened if winter had not broken. No deep winter floors would have forced me to sit down right there in the laundry room and put my socks on. But the floor wasn’t too cold so I figured that sitting down once would shave precious seconds off of prep time and allow me a more leisurely drive into the office.

I go into the bedroom pick up my shoes sit down on the edge of the bed and I can’t find my socks any place. I stand up look where I was sitting. I walk back toward the kitchen; no socks. I walk into laundry room; no socks. I walk back toward the bedroom; look on the chest of drawers; no socks. By this time, frustration is starting to mount. This is not a new phenomenon. I have suffered these bouts of short attention span for many years.

I have learned many coping mechanisms. The problem is two fold. First, and most maddening of Bev is that I like to create piles. Paper in my hand? Put it in a pile. Change in my pocket? Put it another pile. Bring the mail in? Put it in another pile. Piles all over the house like cow plop bingo at the county fair. It is a horrible habit that has driven Bev to madness many times throughout our marriage. Since it is a habit, I often place things in these piles without thinking or remembering their placement. This was the second problem.

I use the past tense because I have found a surefire method allowing me to remember on which pile I set stuff. I have found three places to make piles. They are out of the way and the number is limited enough so as not to cause too much distress for Bev. These three pile zones allows me the freedom to sit whatever is in my hand down and when I need it again and can’t find it handy, I only have three places to look and viola; problem solved; item found. I am back on my way. I have been doing this so long that my default setting is: if I can’t find something I go look on the corner of the role top desk, the kitchen island, or the entry way table. Even if I don’t remember walking by any of those places the past three days, I go to those three places.

So even though I know I did not pass any of the piles going from the laundry room, to the bedroom, I look on the corner of the desk, no socks. I look on the kitchen island, no socks, I look on the entry way table no socks. Now, I am starting to become anxious. I have long ago used up the precious “saved” seconds. My toast popped minutes ago and will now be so cold that the butter won’t melt on it, and I still haven’t found my socks that I had firmly in my grasp 5 minutes earlier. Five minutes lost puts me on the verge of having to commit one or two moving violations; passing on a double yellow line on blind man’s curve, going through intersections on the pink, going 35 in the 30 mph zone of McCordsville. However, the children of Mt. Comfort Elementary will be safe as I go 25 mph through their zone.

But where the heck are those socks? Finally, I decide to just forget it and get another pair of socks. Into the closet I go and pull out this pair from the very bottom of the drawer that I hate. They are so inflexible that it feels like I am putting on the tubes from a role of paper towels. I hate these socks. But I try not to bemoan my misfortune. After all, it is my own procrastination that started this cascade of events.

Socks and shoes on; I stomp off towards the kitchen, grab the toast cubes and try to put some butter on them. I grab my lunch bucket and looking at the clock, I begin to wish that this was happening 5 days later. Then I could blame it of daylight savings time. I grab my coat and throw it on. Something is not right.  Something feels funny. Thinking what else could go wrong; a mouse on the shoulder, a sudden shoulder tumor; I don’t know. I’m late. So, I whip the coat off. As I do, the socks fall from my shoulder onto the floor.

Don’t worry. The embarrassment of that moment will subside and I will be able soon be able to embrace the short term storage of socks on the shoulder. One must be adaptable in these trying times.

Take care,

Roger.

exceptional learning

I know that everyone sitting around that conference table had good intentions. Everyone’s Outlook probably had “Brainstorming Educational Reform Ideas for a New Millennia” scheduled for Thursday from 2:00 – 4:00 pm. Actually, for ideas this brilliant, it was a full day conflab. You really need to fuel ideas like this with donuts; cream filled, sugar glazed submarines carrying the goo of genius to the minds of educator’s who are looking for the formula for strategic educational success in the 21^st century.

Ideas this big had to have a goal statement: Provide an Excellent Setting for Academic Achievers.

Mission; We will synergistically leverage high quality educational methods of empowerment to meet the needs of an ever-changing gifted educational landscape.

There was a consultant with blue-tooth power point presentations of the needs of today’s students, several boxes of cream filled Long Johns, three urns of coffee just in case a participant couldn’t make it past Starbucks and suddenly, educational nirvana is reached and announced on the front page of the Indianapolis Star. Hamilton South Eastern is announcing plans to build a school for 2000 of its district’s high achievers. I hear that the parking lot will have hovercraft facilities for the more attentive parents. I am glad to see that they will not have athletic facilities. It would be painful to watch 11 nerds take on 11 playa’s in football. It might be embarrassing watching the opposing cheerleaders taunt the smarties with  “Pythagoras, Pythagoras; you’re so square. You’re not wearing underwear.”

Will somebody look at their statistics book for me? Since when did the top 40% mean the truly exceptional? Yes, Hamilton South Eastern has 5000 high school students total; 3000 academically exceptionally challenged (dumb) and 2000 academically exceptional (not quite as dumb). Or is that exceptionally academically challenged? Adverbs were always so hard to keep track of when strung together.

If truth be known, this is all a result of a school corporation pushing through a tax increase last fall. They have more money than God now and this is how they plan to spend it. More power to them. It is just a stupid idea.  I have long argued that school was just day prison for kids.  They have metal detectors, armed guards, and lock downs. Now Hamilton South Eastern has chosen to Balkanize them. Keep the Sneetches apart; creating gangs rather than community.

Some will contend that the gangs already existed and this recognizes the facts and lets each gang concentrate on what they do best; the brains learning geometry, the “rest” texting and rolling spliffs. Wouldn’t the “rest” benefit from learning how much weed it takes to fill a tube of a certain length and radius? There’s a story problem for you.

What is wrong with education? I don’t know. But I suspect that much of it could be solved by making schools much smaller, and integrated socially, academically, and racially. Rigor in curriculum would help too. It seems that there is more education with a C and maybe a D in calculus than an A in underwater basket weaving.  Motivation would be a problem. Yet, motivation comes in many forms and with an all day educational summit, this problem could be overcome.

The Hamilton South Eastern example is a small symptom of the issues that have come together in a firestorm of debate that started in Wisconsin and is everywhere in the media now. Teachers are paid too much. Teachers are not paid for merit but for longevity. Administrators make too much. There are too many administrators. Classroom size is too large. Parents don’t care. Standardized testing is useless and it is not education. The kids are stupid. For its example, Hamilton South Eastern has decided take its smart bat and go home so to speak.

So while the education system stinks, each constituency is sure that their part of the poop smells like daisies. It appears that now this olfactory debate will be decided by the vehemence, and volume of their arguments.

Like Lord of the Flies for grown-ups. Which only 40% of the children in Hamilton South Eastern will be reading in a couple of years.

Take Care

Roger