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This is the best time of year for exploring lost neighborhoods. The snow has melted and no undergrowth has leafed out yet. Last fall’s leaves are flattened down by the snow pack, though not as much as usual after a mild winter. One can see far into the woods in early spring, and the stone walls, the cellar holes and abandoned roads are least concealed.
Finding old roads can be difficult. Not only are they overgrown, but many have also been used for logging at least once, and sometimes two or three times. Landings were bulldozed and skidders dragged hundreds of twitches along and across them. In some cases, the roads were improved for logging trucks, but not necessarily along the original routes. Conscientious loggers preserved some old roads by constructing water bars at regular intervals where they’re steepest, thus preventing washouts by spring runoff and summer thunderstorms. Trouble is, the water bars are sometimes too big to drive my truck over and I have to hike in with my aging legs. This may be the year I finally buy a four-wheeler.
Stonewalls have been breached in some places by skidders or bulldozers or just plowed under. Cellar holes have been filled in or buried in slash and cemeteries damaged. I ran into all these problems while exploring the abandoned neighborhood on the Lovell/Stoneham town line where Calvin McKeen was killed by John Coffin in 1860.
My first information about the incident came from the August, 2000 edition of “Cold River Chronicle.” It’s an old, but familiar story. Two men were drinking more than they should. One, McKeen, had a reputation as a hothead. The other, Coffin, had a gun. There were rumors that McKeen’s wife was involved with Coffin, an occasional boarder in the household. Over a bottle of rot gut rum, things got out of hand. McKeen evidently went after Coffin with a butcher knife. Coffin, a blacksmith, caved his skull in with a hot iron and then shot him. After a highly-publicized trial, Coffin was found guilty of manslaughter and served five years at the Maine State Prison in Thomaston.
Coffin was defended by Attorney David R. Hastings of Lovell whose photo appeared in Cold River Chronicle. Knowing his descendant and namesake, attorney and current Maine State Senator David R. Hastings III of Fryeburg, I was struck by the strong resemblance between the two though they’re separated by a hundred forty years and however many generations. Coffin’s sister later married the son of Maine’s governor Garcelon and they built an impressive mansion on the opposite shore of Kezar Lake from the abandoned neighborhood which still stands.
David Crouse, publisher of “Cold River Chronicle,” included a map of the old neighborhood. Looking around last spring, I ran across a solitary gravestone. It seemed out of place all by itself on a knoll beside an old road. There was no other indication that a cemetery ever existed there - no fence, no other gravestones, nothing. And it was not a primitive stone. It was innately carved marble on a granite pedestal and inscribed: “Caroline” most prominently, and beneath that was: “wife of William Sawyer. Died June 8, 1882 AE 65 yrs. 5 mos. 11 ds.” Caroline and William Sawyer lived in the house closest to the murder scene and were the first people informed on the night of Calvin McKeen’s death by both his widow and his killer.
Carrying 1858 and 1963 maps of the area as well as a DeLorme Atlas, I found several cellar holes and roads, but so far I’ve been unable to determine for certain which ones belonged to Calvin McKeen and Caroline Sawyer. Using the bridge over Cold Brook as reference point, I was thrown off. It’s a modern bridge and quite elaborate for what is now a sparsely-populated area. I asked Lovell’s John Chandler if the bridge was rebuilt on the site of the one it replaced and he told me it was. Exploring further, I found stonework upstream that may have been part of an older bridge. After the mud dries a little more, I’m going back in there and hopefully reach some conclusions.
But for cellar holes, stone walls, cemeteries and obscured roads, nothing is left of a 19th century neighborhood with at least two schools, a mill, two shops, and many farms. A few camps and houses have sprung up in the past few decades but most of the land is now part of the White Mountain National Forest.
Cold River Chronicle’s David Crouse and Robert Williams of the Lovell Historical Society are offering a program on Calvin McKeen’s murder at the Charlotte Hobbs Library in Lovell June 27th at 7:00 pm.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Lining Up Last
At St. William’s School, we always lined up before doing anything. It was girls on the left and boys on the right whether we were going out to recess, to the lunchroom, back to the classroom, or wherever. The girls’ line always went first and sometimes I resented that. If I was shivering in the cold wind, I had to wait for the girls to file in first. Seldom did they seem to appreciate our sacrifice. They accepted their privilege as a matter of course.
Girls were more organized than we were. If I forgot to write down a homework assignment or lost it entirely, I could always call up Mary Bauer or Geraldine Hoyle. One of them would be home and able to tell me what it was we were supposed to do. Both were kind and helpful and I didn’t mind if they always went first, but some of other girls were annoying and it was easy to resent them. But it didn’t matter what I thought. They were girls and they always went first.
When I graduated from eighth grade, I went to a Catholic all-male high school and my sisters went to a Catholic all-female high school nearby. After graduation, young men my age were last in line again as Affirmative Action programs were getting started. Women and minorities were given preference over Caucasian males in hiring and promotion. Then we had to get in line for the draft during the Vietnam War. Women were exempt from that. They didn’t have to line up at all.
In those days there were demonstrations in which women demanded equal pay for equal work. I had no objection. In the kinds of jobs I was working at the time, women were getting the same low wages I was getting. I didn’t see any wage discrimination, but that’s not to say it wasn’t happening somewhere else.
When my first three children were girls, I was glad women were guaranteed at least as many opportunities as men were. With Affirmative Action and other developments, they were likely to get even more opportunities than men. They were born in the 1970s when girls were thought to be disadvantaged in schools so special programs were set up to assist them. Evidently they’ve been successful, inasmuch as girls’ performance is measured against boys’ performance at least. Girls are way ahead.
Most feminists pushing these special programs believed there were no differences between males and females beyond the obvious physical ones. We’re all the same, they insisted. They really believed this and still do. The only reason men achieved more than women was because the evil patriarchy conspired to keep women down. They insisted that if you raised girls the same as boys, they would turn out the same.
The most tragic result of this fallacious teaching is what happened to an unfortunate boy born an identical twin in 1965. When he and his brother were circumcised, his was botched. A woman using an electrical cauterizing device accidentally burned off his penis. His parents were persuaded by Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University that the boy could be raised as a girl just as easily as his twin brother would be raised as a boy. So the rest of his genitalia were removed in a sex change operation. He was raised as a girl and given hormone treatments during adolescence. In spite of socialization, hormones, the nurturing as a girl, he never adjusted. He didn’t want to play with dolls; he was prone to fighting; he peed standing up. Finally, he was told what really happened to him and he set out to reverse it. He had surgery again to reconstruct a penis and even married. Two years ago, at age 38, he killed himself. Dr. John Money is still writing and lecturing, however, about how there are no differences between males and females beyond the obvious physical ones.
At a recent in-service workshop in MSAD 72 called “With Boys in Mind,” two veteran elementary teachers offered data convincing most present that boys are in trouble. Nationally, boys make up 2/3 of students in special education and are more likely to be classified as hyperactive. Boys earn 70% of D’s and F’s and fewer than half of the A’s. Boys represent 90% of discipline referrals. When it comes to grades and homework, girls outperform boys in elementary, middle, high school, and even graduate school. Men make up less than 40% of college graduates these days. Boys are many times more likely to commit suicide than girls and women.
There were brain research findings indicating that girls mature earlier than boys. One woman at the workshop wondered aloud if men ever caught up. I told her we would eventually, but we die too soon. The average life span for women is several years longer than for men. Finally, men are allowed to go first - to the morgue.
Girls were more organized than we were. If I forgot to write down a homework assignment or lost it entirely, I could always call up Mary Bauer or Geraldine Hoyle. One of them would be home and able to tell me what it was we were supposed to do. Both were kind and helpful and I didn’t mind if they always went first, but some of other girls were annoying and it was easy to resent them. But it didn’t matter what I thought. They were girls and they always went first.
When I graduated from eighth grade, I went to a Catholic all-male high school and my sisters went to a Catholic all-female high school nearby. After graduation, young men my age were last in line again as Affirmative Action programs were getting started. Women and minorities were given preference over Caucasian males in hiring and promotion. Then we had to get in line for the draft during the Vietnam War. Women were exempt from that. They didn’t have to line up at all.
In those days there were demonstrations in which women demanded equal pay for equal work. I had no objection. In the kinds of jobs I was working at the time, women were getting the same low wages I was getting. I didn’t see any wage discrimination, but that’s not to say it wasn’t happening somewhere else.
When my first three children were girls, I was glad women were guaranteed at least as many opportunities as men were. With Affirmative Action and other developments, they were likely to get even more opportunities than men. They were born in the 1970s when girls were thought to be disadvantaged in schools so special programs were set up to assist them. Evidently they’ve been successful, inasmuch as girls’ performance is measured against boys’ performance at least. Girls are way ahead.
Most feminists pushing these special programs believed there were no differences between males and females beyond the obvious physical ones. We’re all the same, they insisted. They really believed this and still do. The only reason men achieved more than women was because the evil patriarchy conspired to keep women down. They insisted that if you raised girls the same as boys, they would turn out the same.
The most tragic result of this fallacious teaching is what happened to an unfortunate boy born an identical twin in 1965. When he and his brother were circumcised, his was botched. A woman using an electrical cauterizing device accidentally burned off his penis. His parents were persuaded by Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University that the boy could be raised as a girl just as easily as his twin brother would be raised as a boy. So the rest of his genitalia were removed in a sex change operation. He was raised as a girl and given hormone treatments during adolescence. In spite of socialization, hormones, the nurturing as a girl, he never adjusted. He didn’t want to play with dolls; he was prone to fighting; he peed standing up. Finally, he was told what really happened to him and he set out to reverse it. He had surgery again to reconstruct a penis and even married. Two years ago, at age 38, he killed himself. Dr. John Money is still writing and lecturing, however, about how there are no differences between males and females beyond the obvious physical ones.
At a recent in-service workshop in MSAD 72 called “With Boys in Mind,” two veteran elementary teachers offered data convincing most present that boys are in trouble. Nationally, boys make up 2/3 of students in special education and are more likely to be classified as hyperactive. Boys earn 70% of D’s and F’s and fewer than half of the A’s. Boys represent 90% of discipline referrals. When it comes to grades and homework, girls outperform boys in elementary, middle, high school, and even graduate school. Men make up less than 40% of college graduates these days. Boys are many times more likely to commit suicide than girls and women.
There were brain research findings indicating that girls mature earlier than boys. One woman at the workshop wondered aloud if men ever caught up. I told her we would eventually, but we die too soon. The average life span for women is several years longer than for men. Finally, men are allowed to go first - to the morgue.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Bias in the Classroom
As a teacher who has been accused many times of conservative bias in the classroom, the stories caught my eye. Two teachers, one in Colorado and one in New Jersey, have been accused of teaching with a liberal bias during the last two weeks.
Both stories broke the same day on the Drudge Report. One teacher in Colorado, Jay Bennish, delivered a dizzying diatribe in his 10th grade world geography class that was recorded by a student using an MP3 player. The student provided the recording to a local radio talk show and it stirred up a hullaballoo. Rambling from topic to topic, Bennish claimed that capitalism was “at odds with human rights,” compared President Bush to Hitler saying there were “eerie similarities” between what Bush said in his State of the Union Address and “things that Adolph Hitler used to say,” and he claimed the United States was “probably the single most violent nation on earth.” Bennish was suspended with pay for a week pending an investigation.
The New Jersey teacher, John Kyle, taught a senior AP government class. With permission of his principal, Kyle was conducting a week-long “war crimes” trial of President Bush. Other teachers and students played roles of present and former government officials like Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld delivering different perspectives on Bush’s alleged war crimes. One “witness” is an Iraqi citizen claiming his family members were killed in a US bombing attack. Students researched their positions in preparation for the trial. Kyle’s assumption that there would be probable cause to try Bush as a war criminal seems dubious, but beyond that, his lesson plan allows for many points of view to be aired. If I taught in his school and were asked to participate, I would. Kyle’s school district has taken no action against him or his “trial.” That’s as it should be.
Anyone can listen to the MP3 recording of Bennish online. I did, and he was cranked up like a televangelist on steroids. It was obvious that Bennish believed passionately in his left-wing views. He tried to engage students, but it was mostly him. Capitalism would be a relevant theme in a world geography class in that it’s an economic system, but Bennish’s description of it was anything but balanced. Comparing Bush to Hitler and calling the US the most violent nation are questionable on their face and certainly obscure themes for a geography class. We can’t know if that 20-minute recording was representative of all Bennish’s classes, but if it was, he needs to be reigned in.
After a week-long investigation, Bennish was reinstated by school superintendent Monte Moses. “Some think Mr. Bennish should be fired. Others think he should be praised,” Moses said. “In my judgment, the answer is neither. Jay Bennish has promise as a teacher, but his practice and deportment need growth and refinement.” Fair enough. Bennish seems like a popular teacher. Several students demonstrated in his support after his suspension. Obviously an intense advocate for his views, that intensity is probably contagious in his classroom. The 28-year-old teacher promised to be more balanced in his approach to his subject.
Others students demonstrated in support of the student, Sean Allen, who recorded him. “I never wanted him fired,” Allen said. “I just wanted him to go back to teaching geography. Hopefully, he won’t be teaching the things he previously taught.”
Although Colorado’s Mr. Bennish obviously has a leftist bias, we can’t be certain about New Jersey’s Mr. Kyle, but I hope he has formed opinions about the war in Iraq. “Social studies” teachers - what we call history and geography teachers these days - should be passionate about their subjects and most of the teachers I’ve met are. If we’re thoughtful people and not robots, we’ve studied our subjects thoroughly and arrived at some conclusions about the major events in history - tentative conclusions at least. Therefore, we have biases in favor of some things and against others. We serve our students best if we disclose our biases and let them filter what we say accordingly. We’re bound to teach passionately what we believe passionately. Unless we’re talented actors, we won’t teach what we don’t believe as well. Students should be aware of that. As scholars, we must be thoroughly cognizant of arguments opposing our chosen positions and be able to articulate them competently if not compellingly.
Most complaints about me over the years have been from people who assume that I teach the same way I write, which I don’t. Nonetheless, I’ve been the subject of more than one investigation here in MSAD 72. It appears that both the Colorado and New Jersey school districts have handled their respective controversies properly and fairly. I’m happy to report that my district has handled questions about me fairly as well.
Both stories broke the same day on the Drudge Report. One teacher in Colorado, Jay Bennish, delivered a dizzying diatribe in his 10th grade world geography class that was recorded by a student using an MP3 player. The student provided the recording to a local radio talk show and it stirred up a hullaballoo. Rambling from topic to topic, Bennish claimed that capitalism was “at odds with human rights,” compared President Bush to Hitler saying there were “eerie similarities” between what Bush said in his State of the Union Address and “things that Adolph Hitler used to say,” and he claimed the United States was “probably the single most violent nation on earth.” Bennish was suspended with pay for a week pending an investigation.
The New Jersey teacher, John Kyle, taught a senior AP government class. With permission of his principal, Kyle was conducting a week-long “war crimes” trial of President Bush. Other teachers and students played roles of present and former government officials like Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld delivering different perspectives on Bush’s alleged war crimes. One “witness” is an Iraqi citizen claiming his family members were killed in a US bombing attack. Students researched their positions in preparation for the trial. Kyle’s assumption that there would be probable cause to try Bush as a war criminal seems dubious, but beyond that, his lesson plan allows for many points of view to be aired. If I taught in his school and were asked to participate, I would. Kyle’s school district has taken no action against him or his “trial.” That’s as it should be.
Anyone can listen to the MP3 recording of Bennish online. I did, and he was cranked up like a televangelist on steroids. It was obvious that Bennish believed passionately in his left-wing views. He tried to engage students, but it was mostly him. Capitalism would be a relevant theme in a world geography class in that it’s an economic system, but Bennish’s description of it was anything but balanced. Comparing Bush to Hitler and calling the US the most violent nation are questionable on their face and certainly obscure themes for a geography class. We can’t know if that 20-minute recording was representative of all Bennish’s classes, but if it was, he needs to be reigned in.
After a week-long investigation, Bennish was reinstated by school superintendent Monte Moses. “Some think Mr. Bennish should be fired. Others think he should be praised,” Moses said. “In my judgment, the answer is neither. Jay Bennish has promise as a teacher, but his practice and deportment need growth and refinement.” Fair enough. Bennish seems like a popular teacher. Several students demonstrated in his support after his suspension. Obviously an intense advocate for his views, that intensity is probably contagious in his classroom. The 28-year-old teacher promised to be more balanced in his approach to his subject.
Others students demonstrated in support of the student, Sean Allen, who recorded him. “I never wanted him fired,” Allen said. “I just wanted him to go back to teaching geography. Hopefully, he won’t be teaching the things he previously taught.”
Although Colorado’s Mr. Bennish obviously has a leftist bias, we can’t be certain about New Jersey’s Mr. Kyle, but I hope he has formed opinions about the war in Iraq. “Social studies” teachers - what we call history and geography teachers these days - should be passionate about their subjects and most of the teachers I’ve met are. If we’re thoughtful people and not robots, we’ve studied our subjects thoroughly and arrived at some conclusions about the major events in history - tentative conclusions at least. Therefore, we have biases in favor of some things and against others. We serve our students best if we disclose our biases and let them filter what we say accordingly. We’re bound to teach passionately what we believe passionately. Unless we’re talented actors, we won’t teach what we don’t believe as well. Students should be aware of that. As scholars, we must be thoroughly cognizant of arguments opposing our chosen positions and be able to articulate them competently if not compellingly.
Most complaints about me over the years have been from people who assume that I teach the same way I write, which I don’t. Nonetheless, I’ve been the subject of more than one investigation here in MSAD 72. It appears that both the Colorado and New Jersey school districts have handled their respective controversies properly and fairly. I’m happy to report that my district has handled questions about me fairly as well.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Tougher Standards Needed
Ten years ago, Maine public schools outperformed Massachusetts public schools. Now, however, Maine has fallen behind Massachusetts. Why? According to a recent article in the Portland Press Herald: “Spending does not appear to be a factor. Maine in 2003 spent $9,521 per pupil when adjusted for regional cost differences, the seventh highest in the nation and about $1,000 per student more than Massachusetts.” So what is it then?
Evidently, it’s accountability, or lack thereof in Maine’s case.
Massachusetts passed a tough education reform law back in 1993 - the result of a very unlikely political alliance. Liberal Republican Governor William Weld teamed up with his former opponent, conservative Democrat John Silber and good-ole-boy, Boston-Irish political hack Billy Bulger, the Senate President. This unlikely troika got together and did something good; they bucked the state teachers’ union and forced graduating high school seniors to pass a statewide test to prove they could meet minimum standards in English and math by passing a test before getting a diploma. The teachers’ union howled, but the collective political influence of Weld, Silber and Bulger proved too strong for them. The graduation tests took ten years to phase in but by 2003, graduating seniors had to prove they had what used to be just an 8th-grade-level proficiency in English and math. Ninety percent passed the tests - more than almost anybody expected. Why? Because they had to if they wanted a diploma. They rose to the occasion.
In Maine, I remember that in 1995, then-governor Angus King wanted to require the same kind of testing for Maine’s graduating seniors. The teachers’ unions howled here too, but King couldn’t hold out against them. According to the article, “King acknowledges that it may have been a mistake to succumb to political opposition that forced him to compromise and abandon the idea of exit exams. ‘If you want to measure kids in math, why does Brunswick have to have a different test than Windham?’ he asked. ‘Isn't long division the same in both places?’” He was referring to policy Maine adopted which gave every school system the right to design their own “local assessments.” There was also a statewide test called the “Maine Educational Assessment Test” given in 4th, 8th, and 11th grades, but there were no consequences for students who failed it.
Most teachers I talked to back then were against Governor King’s high-stakes graduation tests, but I wasn’t. I got the feeling that if too many of their students were unable to pass minimum-competency graduation tests, they were worried about having to explain why those failing students got good grades in their classes. There was and is a reluctance to admit how many teachers dumb down curricula and inflate grades. Poor results on high stakes tests would shine a strong light on that and force its acknowledgment.
Back in 1988, I published the first column I ever got paid for, called: “Nobody Stays Back Anymore.” The Press Herald paid me $25.00 and I got positive feedback from veteran teachers all over the region. I described how students were passed along from grade to grade although it was clear that an increasing percentage of them had learned very little. That was almost two decades ago and it hasn’t gotten any better, in this state at least. Business owners who paid high property taxes (three quarters of which fund schools in Maine) complained of high school graduates without the language skills to fill out job applications. Who could blame them?
Since the Carter Administration, we’ve had a Department of Education in Washington. Republicans once tried to abolish it, but changed their minds. If the federal government has any reason for being in the education business at all, it should be to institute minimum competency exams in English, math, history and geography for graduating seniors nationwide. States could use them or not as they wished. But, wouldn’t you want to know how your local high school was doing compared to those in the rest of the country? There would be pressure at the state and local levels to use them, but it would be their choice, thereby preserving local control. The feds couldn’t dictate how to get students to pass the tests; that would be up to states or the local districts. All they would do is set a minimum standard. States could continue to develop assessments measuring how far beyond minimum their students get, but at least we’d know that possession of a high school diploma meant you could at least read, write, and do simple math.
If the US Department of Education can’t figure out the essentials of what students must know upon graduation, and then design a way to measure whether they know it or not, it should be abolished.
Evidently, it’s accountability, or lack thereof in Maine’s case.
Massachusetts passed a tough education reform law back in 1993 - the result of a very unlikely political alliance. Liberal Republican Governor William Weld teamed up with his former opponent, conservative Democrat John Silber and good-ole-boy, Boston-Irish political hack Billy Bulger, the Senate President. This unlikely troika got together and did something good; they bucked the state teachers’ union and forced graduating high school seniors to pass a statewide test to prove they could meet minimum standards in English and math by passing a test before getting a diploma. The teachers’ union howled, but the collective political influence of Weld, Silber and Bulger proved too strong for them. The graduation tests took ten years to phase in but by 2003, graduating seniors had to prove they had what used to be just an 8th-grade-level proficiency in English and math. Ninety percent passed the tests - more than almost anybody expected. Why? Because they had to if they wanted a diploma. They rose to the occasion.
In Maine, I remember that in 1995, then-governor Angus King wanted to require the same kind of testing for Maine’s graduating seniors. The teachers’ unions howled here too, but King couldn’t hold out against them. According to the article, “King acknowledges that it may have been a mistake to succumb to political opposition that forced him to compromise and abandon the idea of exit exams. ‘If you want to measure kids in math, why does Brunswick have to have a different test than Windham?’ he asked. ‘Isn't long division the same in both places?’” He was referring to policy Maine adopted which gave every school system the right to design their own “local assessments.” There was also a statewide test called the “Maine Educational Assessment Test” given in 4th, 8th, and 11th grades, but there were no consequences for students who failed it.
Most teachers I talked to back then were against Governor King’s high-stakes graduation tests, but I wasn’t. I got the feeling that if too many of their students were unable to pass minimum-competency graduation tests, they were worried about having to explain why those failing students got good grades in their classes. There was and is a reluctance to admit how many teachers dumb down curricula and inflate grades. Poor results on high stakes tests would shine a strong light on that and force its acknowledgment.
Back in 1988, I published the first column I ever got paid for, called: “Nobody Stays Back Anymore.” The Press Herald paid me $25.00 and I got positive feedback from veteran teachers all over the region. I described how students were passed along from grade to grade although it was clear that an increasing percentage of them had learned very little. That was almost two decades ago and it hasn’t gotten any better, in this state at least. Business owners who paid high property taxes (three quarters of which fund schools in Maine) complained of high school graduates without the language skills to fill out job applications. Who could blame them?
Since the Carter Administration, we’ve had a Department of Education in Washington. Republicans once tried to abolish it, but changed their minds. If the federal government has any reason for being in the education business at all, it should be to institute minimum competency exams in English, math, history and geography for graduating seniors nationwide. States could use them or not as they wished. But, wouldn’t you want to know how your local high school was doing compared to those in the rest of the country? There would be pressure at the state and local levels to use them, but it would be their choice, thereby preserving local control. The feds couldn’t dictate how to get students to pass the tests; that would be up to states or the local districts. All they would do is set a minimum standard. States could continue to develop assessments measuring how far beyond minimum their students get, but at least we’d know that possession of a high school diploma meant you could at least read, write, and do simple math.
If the US Department of Education can’t figure out the essentials of what students must know upon graduation, and then design a way to measure whether they know it or not, it should be abolished.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Melting Pot Redux
Born into a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat family, I was taught early about how the British oppressed the Irish for eight hundred years. For whatever was wrong with the Irish, the British were to blame. It was a convenient way for so-called Irish-Americans to look at the world because it wasn’t necessary to examine ourselves for any faults. Why should we when there was such a convenient scapegoat? That there weren’t any British in America wasn’t an obstacle to this world view because there were the descendants of British colonists here to criticize. We blamed the “Boston Brahmins” or the Yankees or the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who kept the Irish down. There was, no doubt, some discrimination. However, even when the Irish had virtually taken over Boston and elected mayor after mayor during almost the entire twentieth century, they still blamed the Yankees or the British for their problems and bragged about sending money to terrorists in the IRA (Irish Republican Army) to blow up Protestant pubs and British soldiers in Northern Ireland.
Gradually though, the Boston Irish assimilated into the great melting pot as they married Italians from the North End or moved out to the suburbs. After a while, most identified themselves as just Americans with no hyphen. When I moved from the Boston area to rural Maine thirty years ago, the “Protestant Ethic” still prevailed here - what dictionary.com calls: “a belief in and devotion to hard work, duty, thrift, self-discipline, and responsibility.” In other words, if something was wrong in your life, the first place you should look for a reason was in the mirror. It was the polar opposite of the “oppressed victim” mentality prevalent in the Democrat Party. Bit-by-bit, however, Maine morphed into a liberal Democrat state much like Massachusetts - ever ready to champion victim groups.
Victim mentality dovetails nicely with the newer, liberal Democrat ethic of “multiculturalism” which is quite different from the traditional melting pot model. Multiculturalism would encourage people to identify with their minority group rather than assimilate into the larger culture. Multiculturalism is a loose concept which seems to claim that all cultures are equal, but that allegedly oppressed cultures are more equal than others. The least equal of cultures would be the previously-dominant Yankee culture which established the Constitution and all the individual rights people in victim groups enjoy. Multiculturalists believe minority victim groups should not assimilate into a great melting pot, but should cherish and preserve whatever makes them different from everybody else.
Wikipedia defines multiculturalism as “the public policy for managing cultural diversity in a multiethnic society, officially stressing mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences within a country's borders.” It’s official federal policy in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and it’s the prevailing ethic in humanities departments of almost every college and university in the western world. Critics of multiculturalism, including this writer, are called racist and xenophobic. Afraid of such labels, few spoke out against it, but that is beginning to change.
While not yet official government policy in the European Union, multiculturalism has certainly been the practice in western or “Old Europe.” It’s major flaws are exposed by fast-growing minorities of Muslim immigrants and their descendants in nearly every European city. At first, they were embraced by liberals as victim groups and granted “asylum,” but that’s wearing thin. It’s getting difficult for European liberals to maintain tolerance when Muslim minorities in their countries riot, burn cars, rape women, burn synagogues, torture Jews to death, kill fim directors, blow up trains and busses, and threaten Europe with September 11th style attacks because of a few cartoons. Muslim neighborhoods want to follow sharia (Islamic law) instead the laws of their adopted countries. European Muslims are a stridently intolerant minority in their attitudes toward women, homosexuals, Jews, and other minorities. It’s getting extremely awkward for liberals to celebrate that kind of multicultural diversity. How do you tolerate a culture that wants to destroy your way of life? Will the multiculturalists tolerate intolerance too?
Multiculturalists are beginning to realize that they shouldn’t have chucked the old American “Melting Pot” model. Their “cultural mosaic” model, and “salad bowl” model, and “celebrating diversity” models are all disintegrating with the onslaught of radical Islam all over the world. Several of Europe’s most liberal countries including Netherlands, France and Germany are taking steps to drastically cut, eliminate, or even reverse Muslim immigration.
It looks like the diversity celebration is almost over in Europe at least. Last call still a ways off here in the USA, but it’s coming.
Gradually though, the Boston Irish assimilated into the great melting pot as they married Italians from the North End or moved out to the suburbs. After a while, most identified themselves as just Americans with no hyphen. When I moved from the Boston area to rural Maine thirty years ago, the “Protestant Ethic” still prevailed here - what dictionary.com calls: “a belief in and devotion to hard work, duty, thrift, self-discipline, and responsibility.” In other words, if something was wrong in your life, the first place you should look for a reason was in the mirror. It was the polar opposite of the “oppressed victim” mentality prevalent in the Democrat Party. Bit-by-bit, however, Maine morphed into a liberal Democrat state much like Massachusetts - ever ready to champion victim groups.
Victim mentality dovetails nicely with the newer, liberal Democrat ethic of “multiculturalism” which is quite different from the traditional melting pot model. Multiculturalism would encourage people to identify with their minority group rather than assimilate into the larger culture. Multiculturalism is a loose concept which seems to claim that all cultures are equal, but that allegedly oppressed cultures are more equal than others. The least equal of cultures would be the previously-dominant Yankee culture which established the Constitution and all the individual rights people in victim groups enjoy. Multiculturalists believe minority victim groups should not assimilate into a great melting pot, but should cherish and preserve whatever makes them different from everybody else.
Wikipedia defines multiculturalism as “the public policy for managing cultural diversity in a multiethnic society, officially stressing mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences within a country's borders.” It’s official federal policy in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and it’s the prevailing ethic in humanities departments of almost every college and university in the western world. Critics of multiculturalism, including this writer, are called racist and xenophobic. Afraid of such labels, few spoke out against it, but that is beginning to change.
While not yet official government policy in the European Union, multiculturalism has certainly been the practice in western or “Old Europe.” It’s major flaws are exposed by fast-growing minorities of Muslim immigrants and their descendants in nearly every European city. At first, they were embraced by liberals as victim groups and granted “asylum,” but that’s wearing thin. It’s getting difficult for European liberals to maintain tolerance when Muslim minorities in their countries riot, burn cars, rape women, burn synagogues, torture Jews to death, kill fim directors, blow up trains and busses, and threaten Europe with September 11th style attacks because of a few cartoons. Muslim neighborhoods want to follow sharia (Islamic law) instead the laws of their adopted countries. European Muslims are a stridently intolerant minority in their attitudes toward women, homosexuals, Jews, and other minorities. It’s getting extremely awkward for liberals to celebrate that kind of multicultural diversity. How do you tolerate a culture that wants to destroy your way of life? Will the multiculturalists tolerate intolerance too?
Multiculturalists are beginning to realize that they shouldn’t have chucked the old American “Melting Pot” model. Their “cultural mosaic” model, and “salad bowl” model, and “celebrating diversity” models are all disintegrating with the onslaught of radical Islam all over the world. Several of Europe’s most liberal countries including Netherlands, France and Germany are taking steps to drastically cut, eliminate, or even reverse Muslim immigration.
It looks like the diversity celebration is almost over in Europe at least. Last call still a ways off here in the USA, but it’s coming.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Oh Shoot
“Mr. McLaughlin, did you hear about Vice President Dick Cheney shooting that guy?” as student asked on a Monday morning, just as the first class of the day was beginning.
“Yes, I did.”
“The vice president shot someone?” said another student incredulously.
“Evidently there was a hunting accident in Texas over the weekend,” I said. “Vice President Cheney was quail hunting and accidentally hit a hunting companion with bird shot from a small-gauge shotgun. The man is alive, but in the hospital.”
“What if he dies? Will Cheney go to jail?” asked the first student. He seemed to relish the thought.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Possibly, I guess. If Cheney were found to be criminally negligent when the accident occurred, it’s a possibility. Texas law would apply in this case and I don’t know what the rules are down there.” I picked up one of the papers and saw an article below the fold on the front page. I scanned it and found information about the gun Cheney was using. “It says here that the man was shot from thirty yards away with a 28 gauge shotgun. I’ve never heard of that kind of gun. I’ve hunted partridges and woodcock around here with a 20-gauge shotgun. Most people use 12 gauge guns which are bigger. I’ve heard about even smaller shotguns called .410s, but I’ve never heard of a 28 gauge. Have any of you?”
“I’ve heard of them,” said a boy. A .410 is smaller than a 28 gauge. I use a .410 with a slug instead of buckshot to hunt deer with my father.” Other students were listening to him and I could tell from the looks on some faces that they had no idea what he was talking about.
“Buck shot is like a bunch of little BBs spraying out of the gun rather than one bullet. Instead of a bullet hole like this,” I explained while drawing a little circle on the blackboard and filling it in, “buck shot leaves a pattern like this on whatever is hit.” I drew a random collection of smaller dots next to the bullet hole. “The guy Cheney shot would have a lot of little holes on his face, his neck, and his chest.”
“There are some good jokes about it,” said another boy.
“Are any appropriate to tell here?” I asked.
“I can’t remember them exactly right now,” he said.
“I’m sure there will be more,” I said. “Cheney must be feeling bad about it. What he did was pretty stupid and the whole world knows it. Even his friends think he did a dumb thing, and his enemies are chuckling.”
For the next several days students wanted to talk about the incident. I asked them why they thought the story was getting so much attention. “Because it’s the vice president,” said a girl.
“Have any of you known someone involved in a hunting accident?” I asked. “They’re fairly common, unfortunately. Three hands went up. “Without mentioning any names, will you briefly describe what happened?”
One boy said, “A guy who was hunting with my father shot at a deer and there was another hunter behind it. He missed the deer and hit the guy in the leg.”
“Okay,” I said. “Did it get reported in the newspaper?”
“No.” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Did the police investigate?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Did the victim suffer any permanent damage to his leg?”
“No. He’s fine now.”
The other students described hunting accidents they knew about. One victim was shot in the arm and the results of the accident were fairly similar. Neither incident had gotten much attention beyond the circle of people involved.
“Cheney’s accident is being handled quite differently, huh?” I said.
“I don’t think reporters like Dick Cheney,” said a boy.
“I think there’s a liberal bias in the media,” said a girl. “They seem to like reporting on this.” Liberal or conservative bias is something we look for often in class when studying the textbook or when digesting news reports.
“Well,” I said. “There have been several research studies about that. Most indicate that at least four out of five Washington correspondents from the major networks and the biggest newspapers vote Democrat. Fewer than ten percent vote Republican. Cheney is one Republican they love to hate. Karl Rove, the president’s political advisor, is another. Negative stories about either of them tend to get a lot of attention. Cheney has never been afraid of speaking his mind. He’s annoyed a lot of people in the media and now that he’s done something stupid he’s going to have to pay the price, I guess.”
“Yes, I did.”
“The vice president shot someone?” said another student incredulously.
“Evidently there was a hunting accident in Texas over the weekend,” I said. “Vice President Cheney was quail hunting and accidentally hit a hunting companion with bird shot from a small-gauge shotgun. The man is alive, but in the hospital.”
“What if he dies? Will Cheney go to jail?” asked the first student. He seemed to relish the thought.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Possibly, I guess. If Cheney were found to be criminally negligent when the accident occurred, it’s a possibility. Texas law would apply in this case and I don’t know what the rules are down there.” I picked up one of the papers and saw an article below the fold on the front page. I scanned it and found information about the gun Cheney was using. “It says here that the man was shot from thirty yards away with a 28 gauge shotgun. I’ve never heard of that kind of gun. I’ve hunted partridges and woodcock around here with a 20-gauge shotgun. Most people use 12 gauge guns which are bigger. I’ve heard about even smaller shotguns called .410s, but I’ve never heard of a 28 gauge. Have any of you?”
“I’ve heard of them,” said a boy. A .410 is smaller than a 28 gauge. I use a .410 with a slug instead of buckshot to hunt deer with my father.” Other students were listening to him and I could tell from the looks on some faces that they had no idea what he was talking about.
“Buck shot is like a bunch of little BBs spraying out of the gun rather than one bullet. Instead of a bullet hole like this,” I explained while drawing a little circle on the blackboard and filling it in, “buck shot leaves a pattern like this on whatever is hit.” I drew a random collection of smaller dots next to the bullet hole. “The guy Cheney shot would have a lot of little holes on his face, his neck, and his chest.”
“There are some good jokes about it,” said another boy.
“Are any appropriate to tell here?” I asked.
“I can’t remember them exactly right now,” he said.
“I’m sure there will be more,” I said. “Cheney must be feeling bad about it. What he did was pretty stupid and the whole world knows it. Even his friends think he did a dumb thing, and his enemies are chuckling.”
For the next several days students wanted to talk about the incident. I asked them why they thought the story was getting so much attention. “Because it’s the vice president,” said a girl.
“Have any of you known someone involved in a hunting accident?” I asked. “They’re fairly common, unfortunately. Three hands went up. “Without mentioning any names, will you briefly describe what happened?”
One boy said, “A guy who was hunting with my father shot at a deer and there was another hunter behind it. He missed the deer and hit the guy in the leg.”
“Okay,” I said. “Did it get reported in the newspaper?”
“No.” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Did the police investigate?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Did the victim suffer any permanent damage to his leg?”
“No. He’s fine now.”
The other students described hunting accidents they knew about. One victim was shot in the arm and the results of the accident were fairly similar. Neither incident had gotten much attention beyond the circle of people involved.
“Cheney’s accident is being handled quite differently, huh?” I said.
“I don’t think reporters like Dick Cheney,” said a boy.
“I think there’s a liberal bias in the media,” said a girl. “They seem to like reporting on this.” Liberal or conservative bias is something we look for often in class when studying the textbook or when digesting news reports.
“Well,” I said. “There have been several research studies about that. Most indicate that at least four out of five Washington correspondents from the major networks and the biggest newspapers vote Democrat. Fewer than ten percent vote Republican. Cheney is one Republican they love to hate. Karl Rove, the president’s political advisor, is another. Negative stories about either of them tend to get a lot of attention. Cheney has never been afraid of speaking his mind. He’s annoyed a lot of people in the media and now that he’s done something stupid he’s going to have to pay the price, I guess.”
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Students And Cartoon Riots
“There are demonstrations, riots and fire bombings around the world lately because of some cartoon about the prophet Muhammad that was published in a Danish newspaper,” I told students. “Have any of you heard about this?”
Only a few knew knew of it. Taking a piece of chalk, I drew a rough facsimile of one cartoon on the blackboard - a rendition of Muhammad with a turban that looked like a bomb. A lit fuse emerged from the bomb which had Arabic script indicating that it represented Islam. “This and eleven other cartoons were published last October in Denmark, Europe,” I explained, “because a newspaper ran a contest for artists who might wish to illustrate a children’s book about Muhammad. The author, a woman, could find no illustrator willing to do the job out of fear of reprisal from Muslims. The newspaper was trying to help her,” I explained.
“Has anybody seen this cartoon before?” I asked.
Nobody had.
“Evidently, a Muslim cleric in Denmark told people at his mosque the cartoons were insulting to Islam and Muslims should not tolerate them. Soon, Muslims in London and other European cities conducted demonstrations and threatened all of Europe with September 11th-style attacks and new holocausts. There carried signs pledging to slaughter, annihilate and massacre Europeans for insulting Islam. Danish embassies in Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria were attacked. Danish flags were burned in the Gaza Strip by Palestinians who had cheered the 9-11 attacks against the United States five years earlier.”
I waited for a reaction. Nobody raised a hand for several seconds, then one boy who had seen reports of the demonstrations on television said, “I heard that Islam forbids paintings, pictures or figures of Muhammad. That’s why Muslims are so mad.”
“I heard that too,” I said. “American newspapers have decided not to publish the cartoons.”
There was no more discussion of the cartoon demonstrations that day. After school, while browsing familiar web sites and web logs, I found all twelve cartoons published on michellemalkin.com. Michelle Malkin is a conservative syndicated columnist with a very active web log.
In class the next day, I hooked my laptop to the digital projector and showed students the rest of the controversial cartoons. Most were pretty innocuous, what you’d expect to find illustrating a children’s book. The only sketchy one showed Muhammad in heaven telling a line of suicide-bomber jihadists waiting to get in that he was all out of virgins. I thought it was clever and my students thought so too, but that it might insult Muslims who don’t approve of suicide bombers.
Another cartoon showed the star and crescent symbol of Islam superimposed on a drawing of the face of Muhammad. At this, a student commented that the symbol resembled the hammer and sickle symbol on the flag of the former Soviet Union.
I drew the hammer and sickle (with star above) on the board and beside it drew the star and crescent - symbol of Islam. The similarity was striking. It pleased me that some students picked up on this, not that it had any hidden meaning, but at least they were thinking. We had been studying comparisons of World War II with the Cold War. WWII was a fairly traditional war in that Germany and Japan were attempting to take over surrounding territory. The Cold War had that element as well, but it was also ideological with its propagation of communism. The current war with radical Islam is also ideological. Just as Soviet leaders sought to impose communism on the world, radical Islamic leaders like Osama Bin Laden seek to impose Islam and Sharia (Islamic Law) on the world. That the symbols of communism and Islam are similar is curious in that light.
Most students have a fascination with symbology. They remembered that a cross is symbolic of Christianity and a Star of David symbolic of Judaism. When we studied anarchists in early 20th century America, they learned the upper-case “A” with a circle around it was a symbol for anarchists - people against any form of government. They were interested in the swastika symbol when we studied the Nazi takeover of Germany and were quite taken by Soviet and Islamic symbols.
Regarding the alleged claim that Islam forbade pictures of the prophet Muhammad, a link on Michelle Malkin’s site went to an archive with dozens of Muhammad pictures from Islamic countries like Afghanistan, Iran (formerly Persia) and Turkey. Many went back seven centuries to the 1300s. There were other centuries-old pictures of Muhammad from countries in Europe. There was even one from the American TV show
“South Park.” Students laughed when that one came up. Evidently, none had provoked outrage until now.
Most students tentatively concluded that the cartoons were scant justification for riots around the world and that radical Muslims would seize on anything to stir their followers up against the west, just as they had during the French riots (which we studied, and I wrote about in this space) a few months ago.
Only a few knew knew of it. Taking a piece of chalk, I drew a rough facsimile of one cartoon on the blackboard - a rendition of Muhammad with a turban that looked like a bomb. A lit fuse emerged from the bomb which had Arabic script indicating that it represented Islam. “This and eleven other cartoons were published last October in Denmark, Europe,” I explained, “because a newspaper ran a contest for artists who might wish to illustrate a children’s book about Muhammad. The author, a woman, could find no illustrator willing to do the job out of fear of reprisal from Muslims. The newspaper was trying to help her,” I explained.
“Has anybody seen this cartoon before?” I asked.
Nobody had.
“Evidently, a Muslim cleric in Denmark told people at his mosque the cartoons were insulting to Islam and Muslims should not tolerate them. Soon, Muslims in London and other European cities conducted demonstrations and threatened all of Europe with September 11th-style attacks and new holocausts. There carried signs pledging to slaughter, annihilate and massacre Europeans for insulting Islam. Danish embassies in Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria were attacked. Danish flags were burned in the Gaza Strip by Palestinians who had cheered the 9-11 attacks against the United States five years earlier.”
I waited for a reaction. Nobody raised a hand for several seconds, then one boy who had seen reports of the demonstrations on television said, “I heard that Islam forbids paintings, pictures or figures of Muhammad. That’s why Muslims are so mad.”
“I heard that too,” I said. “American newspapers have decided not to publish the cartoons.”
There was no more discussion of the cartoon demonstrations that day. After school, while browsing familiar web sites and web logs, I found all twelve cartoons published on michellemalkin.com. Michelle Malkin is a conservative syndicated columnist with a very active web log.
In class the next day, I hooked my laptop to the digital projector and showed students the rest of the controversial cartoons. Most were pretty innocuous, what you’d expect to find illustrating a children’s book. The only sketchy one showed Muhammad in heaven telling a line of suicide-bomber jihadists waiting to get in that he was all out of virgins. I thought it was clever and my students thought so too, but that it might insult Muslims who don’t approve of suicide bombers.
Another cartoon showed the star and crescent symbol of Islam superimposed on a drawing of the face of Muhammad. At this, a student commented that the symbol resembled the hammer and sickle symbol on the flag of the former Soviet Union.
I drew the hammer and sickle (with star above) on the board and beside it drew the star and crescent - symbol of Islam. The similarity was striking. It pleased me that some students picked up on this, not that it had any hidden meaning, but at least they were thinking. We had been studying comparisons of World War II with the Cold War. WWII was a fairly traditional war in that Germany and Japan were attempting to take over surrounding territory. The Cold War had that element as well, but it was also ideological with its propagation of communism. The current war with radical Islam is also ideological. Just as Soviet leaders sought to impose communism on the world, radical Islamic leaders like Osama Bin Laden seek to impose Islam and Sharia (Islamic Law) on the world. That the symbols of communism and Islam are similar is curious in that light.
Most students have a fascination with symbology. They remembered that a cross is symbolic of Christianity and a Star of David symbolic of Judaism. When we studied anarchists in early 20th century America, they learned the upper-case “A” with a circle around it was a symbol for anarchists - people against any form of government. They were interested in the swastika symbol when we studied the Nazi takeover of Germany and were quite taken by Soviet and Islamic symbols.
Regarding the alleged claim that Islam forbade pictures of the prophet Muhammad, a link on Michelle Malkin’s site went to an archive with dozens of Muhammad pictures from Islamic countries like Afghanistan, Iran (formerly Persia) and Turkey. Many went back seven centuries to the 1300s. There were other centuries-old pictures of Muhammad from countries in Europe. There was even one from the American TV show
“South Park.” Students laughed when that one came up. Evidently, none had provoked outrage until now.
Most students tentatively concluded that the cartoons were scant justification for riots around the world and that radical Muslims would seize on anything to stir their followers up against the west, just as they had during the French riots (which we studied, and I wrote about in this space) a few months ago.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Merchants of Cool
First published 2-9-06
Parents worry sending their kids to middle school - not every one, but a lot. At soccer games, in the post office, at the supermarket, mothers hold fingers over lips and with wide eyes, say: “Susie will be in sixth grade next year.” It’s not like they’re telling me proudly, “Melissa is going to college next year,” or “Billy got an appointment to the Air Force Academy.” No. They tell me ominously. They worry that teenage culture is going to “get” their kids in middle school and their influence as parents will diminish rapidly. Often, they’re correct.
What is teenage culture? It’s not easy to define, but you know it when you see it. Outward signs include bare midriffs on girls and sagging jeans on boys, but it goes deeper. It’s an outlook on the world almost completely without roots. It blows in the wind. It has its own dynamic. It’s permeated by sex and attitude and it’s what you see when you turn on MTV.
What drives it? That’s another difficult question. Is there a sinister force out there conspiring to lead our precious children into temptation? Yes and no. One of the most insightful programs I’ve ever seen about this is from PBS’s “Frontline” back in 2001, called “Merchants of Cool.” You can still get it on Netflix, but you have to wait a while. Merchants of Cool zeroes in on MTV, interviewing the directors of programming, the market researchers they rely on, and the reaction of teenagers to what they broadcast. It claims MTV is a continuously-running commercial which it made its owner, Viacom, $1 billion in profit for the year 2000. It has the usual thirty-second commercials seen on other channels, but even the programming sells product. For instance Sprite, an advertiser, pays teenagers $50 per day to look cool while they hang around in a large room somewhere and respond to whatever they’re shown, like music videos by “artists” sponsored by Viacom. It’s all filmed and edited for MTV’s own programming and also used in standard commercials for Sprite.
Nearly all their programs feature clothing and other merchandise their advertisers sell. Tuning in over the weekend, I saw a show with black men hanging around a barbershop. Interspersed was music from someone called “Fifty Cent,” another Viacom product. The dialogue was punctuated by “beeps” as salacious language about women was censored. The camera zoomed in periodically on the face of a five or six-year-old getting a haircut in the company of the foul-mouthed men. It was sad to watch his expression and consider that the boy is growing up with them as role models.
Though my middle school students have tried to educate me about the alleged distinctions between rap and hip-hop, such “music” will always be just angry-sounding noise pollution to me - abounding in degradation toward women, police, and life in general and worshiping gangsters. Generations of young men, white, black and Hispanic, emulate rap “artists” in dress as well as attitude. Viacom’s biggest white role model is Howard Stern. Enough said. Is Viacom a driving force in teenage culture? It’s one of them.
Frontline’s cameras recorded MTV’s staff as they worked. Most looked to be in their twenties and thirties, but appeared no more mature than the teenagers they targeted. They seemed vicariously titillated watching teenagers gyrate salaciously. When Frontline asked if they felt any misgivings about what they were doing, one woman shrugged and said, “Umm, it’s my personal opinion that teenagers shouldn’t be having sex, but they’re, ahh, confronted with it in terms of advertising. They see it on television, on nighttime shows and on daytime shows.” She shrugged her shoulders again as if she just goes with the flow. A young man said, “There’s no way to stop a movement in popular culture - it’s going to happen with or without you.” He had no qualms of conscience either. It was all out of his control. Might as well make a billion while you’re carried along. During spring break in Florida, Frontline says, “teenagers are followed by MTV cameras through their week of debauchery.” I watched as MTV got hours of free programming while teenagers exaggerated their wild behavior in the presence of MTV’s cameras. “It’s a giant feedback loop,” said Frontline.
So, back to the question: what drives teenage culture? Teenagers claim they do. Viacom says it doesn’t, but only rides the wave. Frontline’s “Merchants of Cool” concludes by saying: “Makers of MTV argue that they’re only reflecting the real world - sex is a part of teens lives so it better be in their media too. Media is just a mirror after all, or is it?”
Americans, not wanting to appear judgmental or intolerant or, heaven forbid, uncool, must then endure the swill Viacom feeds our teenagers. Even if children never watch MTV, they’re influenced by it. We all are, like it or not.
Parents worry sending their kids to middle school - not every one, but a lot. At soccer games, in the post office, at the supermarket, mothers hold fingers over lips and with wide eyes, say: “Susie will be in sixth grade next year.” It’s not like they’re telling me proudly, “Melissa is going to college next year,” or “Billy got an appointment to the Air Force Academy.” No. They tell me ominously. They worry that teenage culture is going to “get” their kids in middle school and their influence as parents will diminish rapidly. Often, they’re correct.
What is teenage culture? It’s not easy to define, but you know it when you see it. Outward signs include bare midriffs on girls and sagging jeans on boys, but it goes deeper. It’s an outlook on the world almost completely without roots. It blows in the wind. It has its own dynamic. It’s permeated by sex and attitude and it’s what you see when you turn on MTV.
What drives it? That’s another difficult question. Is there a sinister force out there conspiring to lead our precious children into temptation? Yes and no. One of the most insightful programs I’ve ever seen about this is from PBS’s “Frontline” back in 2001, called “Merchants of Cool.” You can still get it on Netflix, but you have to wait a while. Merchants of Cool zeroes in on MTV, interviewing the directors of programming, the market researchers they rely on, and the reaction of teenagers to what they broadcast. It claims MTV is a continuously-running commercial which it made its owner, Viacom, $1 billion in profit for the year 2000. It has the usual thirty-second commercials seen on other channels, but even the programming sells product. For instance Sprite, an advertiser, pays teenagers $50 per day to look cool while they hang around in a large room somewhere and respond to whatever they’re shown, like music videos by “artists” sponsored by Viacom. It’s all filmed and edited for MTV’s own programming and also used in standard commercials for Sprite.
Nearly all their programs feature clothing and other merchandise their advertisers sell. Tuning in over the weekend, I saw a show with black men hanging around a barbershop. Interspersed was music from someone called “Fifty Cent,” another Viacom product. The dialogue was punctuated by “beeps” as salacious language about women was censored. The camera zoomed in periodically on the face of a five or six-year-old getting a haircut in the company of the foul-mouthed men. It was sad to watch his expression and consider that the boy is growing up with them as role models.
Though my middle school students have tried to educate me about the alleged distinctions between rap and hip-hop, such “music” will always be just angry-sounding noise pollution to me - abounding in degradation toward women, police, and life in general and worshiping gangsters. Generations of young men, white, black and Hispanic, emulate rap “artists” in dress as well as attitude. Viacom’s biggest white role model is Howard Stern. Enough said. Is Viacom a driving force in teenage culture? It’s one of them.
Frontline’s cameras recorded MTV’s staff as they worked. Most looked to be in their twenties and thirties, but appeared no more mature than the teenagers they targeted. They seemed vicariously titillated watching teenagers gyrate salaciously. When Frontline asked if they felt any misgivings about what they were doing, one woman shrugged and said, “Umm, it’s my personal opinion that teenagers shouldn’t be having sex, but they’re, ahh, confronted with it in terms of advertising. They see it on television, on nighttime shows and on daytime shows.” She shrugged her shoulders again as if she just goes with the flow. A young man said, “There’s no way to stop a movement in popular culture - it’s going to happen with or without you.” He had no qualms of conscience either. It was all out of his control. Might as well make a billion while you’re carried along. During spring break in Florida, Frontline says, “teenagers are followed by MTV cameras through their week of debauchery.” I watched as MTV got hours of free programming while teenagers exaggerated their wild behavior in the presence of MTV’s cameras. “It’s a giant feedback loop,” said Frontline.
So, back to the question: what drives teenage culture? Teenagers claim they do. Viacom says it doesn’t, but only rides the wave. Frontline’s “Merchants of Cool” concludes by saying: “Makers of MTV argue that they’re only reflecting the real world - sex is a part of teens lives so it better be in their media too. Media is just a mirror after all, or is it?”
Americans, not wanting to appear judgmental or intolerant or, heaven forbid, uncool, must then endure the swill Viacom feeds our teenagers. Even if children never watch MTV, they’re influenced by it. We all are, like it or not.
Talk Is Cheap
Published 1-30-06
Words fail us. They’ve never been adequate to express meaning completely, no matter what the language. The best we can hope for is that words will convey a facsimile of what’s inside. Each week I write eight hundred words here, but I’m seldom satisfied with what emerges. It usually falls short of what I mean.
Even when we strive mightily to find the right words, they’re not enough. When I ask a question of a class sometimes and a student raises a hand, he can’t find the words to answer after I’ve called on him. The poor kid will be speechless. I sense he understands but can’t express himself. I’ll encourage him and he’ll make a few attempts, but then cut himself off and say, “Never mind,” in exasperation. I ponder that. It’s a command to ignore him forever. Does he want me never to mind him when he has something to express? I doubt it but that is the literal interpretation. What he really wants is for me to divert attention away from him, so I do.
People who say the least seem most worth listening to. Conversely, those who talk endlessly say little worth hearing. Reading recently about early Christian hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert and practiced silence, I ran across a 1600-year-old quote from Diadochus of Photiki: “When the door of the steam bath is continually left open,” he said, “the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good.” Many times I feel dissipated after writing a column or striving to express something verbally and failing.
We can’t pray openly in public schools. At my school, we have a moment of silence beginning each day after the Pledge of Allegiance and I pray silently then. All day long, however, I hear students say, “Oh my God.” There are variations on this too, such as: “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” and “I was like, so ‘Oh my God.’” It’s perhaps the most ubiquitous phrase uttered in middle school. It’s not, however, considered a prayer, even though it is, literally. It’s not considered a prayer because students don’t have an attitude of prayer when they say it. They’re not kneeling; they’re not fervent or solemn. They’re trying to express how strongly emotional they felt in a certain situation. I wonder, however, if they are actually praying, but at an unconscious level. If they’re attempting to express how deeply emotional they felt a given time by saying, “I was like, ‘Oh my God!” and they have some unconscious awareness of God, what could be stronger than to invoke His name in astonishment?
It’s paradoxical that we can allow public school students to utter words of prayer so long as we know they don’t really mean them as such, but moments of silence in which there is no visible prayer but perhaps some surreptitious worship, make atheists in the ACLU feel like suing. After all the school shootings in the nineties, schools have become hypersensitive about other things students say. Often, we’ll hear one say to another, “I’ll kill you.” Usually it’s when they’re teasing and smiling good-naturedly, but school officials are encouraged to pick up on words like that and consider them danger signals, even when we know they’re not, really.
Then we have the aptly-named “small talk.” It never came easily to me. I find talking without really saying anything quite difficult and my words often stumble when I attempt it. If someone addresses me saying, “How are you?” I’ll take a second or two, consider how I am, and try to find the right word or words to answer honestly. Some are put off by the momentary pause. They don’t want their question to be taken seriously. For them, asking “How are you?” is just a way to say hello and they don’t really want an answer. Or, if they do expect a response, they want one that is as ineffectual as their question and nothing more. My feeling is: if you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
Being silently present can be more meaningful than speaking. Much is communicated wordlessly. We can learn more sometimes by observing someone’s behavior than listening to what he says, but many people are uncomfortable with silence in the presence of others. They’re compelled to talk even when they have nothing much to say. They only feel a semblance of control if they’re talking. Others, however, find silence relaxing and feel completely comfortable with it. As Mark Twain said: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
Words fail us. They’ve never been adequate to express meaning completely, no matter what the language. The best we can hope for is that words will convey a facsimile of what’s inside. Each week I write eight hundred words here, but I’m seldom satisfied with what emerges. It usually falls short of what I mean.
Even when we strive mightily to find the right words, they’re not enough. When I ask a question of a class sometimes and a student raises a hand, he can’t find the words to answer after I’ve called on him. The poor kid will be speechless. I sense he understands but can’t express himself. I’ll encourage him and he’ll make a few attempts, but then cut himself off and say, “Never mind,” in exasperation. I ponder that. It’s a command to ignore him forever. Does he want me never to mind him when he has something to express? I doubt it but that is the literal interpretation. What he really wants is for me to divert attention away from him, so I do.
People who say the least seem most worth listening to. Conversely, those who talk endlessly say little worth hearing. Reading recently about early Christian hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert and practiced silence, I ran across a 1600-year-old quote from Diadochus of Photiki: “When the door of the steam bath is continually left open,” he said, “the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good.” Many times I feel dissipated after writing a column or striving to express something verbally and failing.
We can’t pray openly in public schools. At my school, we have a moment of silence beginning each day after the Pledge of Allegiance and I pray silently then. All day long, however, I hear students say, “Oh my God.” There are variations on this too, such as: “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” and “I was like, so ‘Oh my God.’” It’s perhaps the most ubiquitous phrase uttered in middle school. It’s not, however, considered a prayer, even though it is, literally. It’s not considered a prayer because students don’t have an attitude of prayer when they say it. They’re not kneeling; they’re not fervent or solemn. They’re trying to express how strongly emotional they felt in a certain situation. I wonder, however, if they are actually praying, but at an unconscious level. If they’re attempting to express how deeply emotional they felt a given time by saying, “I was like, ‘Oh my God!” and they have some unconscious awareness of God, what could be stronger than to invoke His name in astonishment?
It’s paradoxical that we can allow public school students to utter words of prayer so long as we know they don’t really mean them as such, but moments of silence in which there is no visible prayer but perhaps some surreptitious worship, make atheists in the ACLU feel like suing. After all the school shootings in the nineties, schools have become hypersensitive about other things students say. Often, we’ll hear one say to another, “I’ll kill you.” Usually it’s when they’re teasing and smiling good-naturedly, but school officials are encouraged to pick up on words like that and consider them danger signals, even when we know they’re not, really.
Then we have the aptly-named “small talk.” It never came easily to me. I find talking without really saying anything quite difficult and my words often stumble when I attempt it. If someone addresses me saying, “How are you?” I’ll take a second or two, consider how I am, and try to find the right word or words to answer honestly. Some are put off by the momentary pause. They don’t want their question to be taken seriously. For them, asking “How are you?” is just a way to say hello and they don’t really want an answer. Or, if they do expect a response, they want one that is as ineffectual as their question and nothing more. My feeling is: if you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
Being silently present can be more meaningful than speaking. Much is communicated wordlessly. We can learn more sometimes by observing someone’s behavior than listening to what he says, but many people are uncomfortable with silence in the presence of others. They’re compelled to talk even when they have nothing much to say. They only feel a semblance of control if they’re talking. Others, however, find silence relaxing and feel completely comfortable with it. As Mark Twain said: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
Holy Smoke
Published 1-24-06
“This is an unusual story,” I said to students while holding up the front page of the Lewiston Sun Journal. There was a large, color, above-the-fold picture of a woman staring at an image burned on a wall after a house fire in Mexico, Maine. Reading from the story, I said, “‘The image was created by smoke, according to the town’s fire chief. Others will say it is a miracle.’ I don’t think another newspaper would have run this story as prominently as the Sun Journal has. Do any of you know who the Virgin Mary is?”
Only three or four hands went up. Other students seemed perplexed, but curious.
“She’s the mother of Jesus,” said a boy.
“That’s what Christians believe,” I said. “Roman Catholics, the biggest group of Christians in this country and in the world, believe that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. Some other Christian groups are skeptical about that.”
“How could she be a virgin and be pregnant?” I heard one student say to another. I repeated the question and said, “The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was visited by the Holy Spirit and became pregnant with the son of God, but remained a virgin. Like I said, not all Christians believe that.”
Some students snickered and others said, “Shh.” I handed the newspaper to a student in the front seat and it went up and down the rows as each stared at the picture.
“I don’t think the Portland Press Herald or the The Boston Globe would feature this story so prominently,” I said. “Lewiston, as well as Mexico and Rumford, are mill towns. French-Canadian immigrants from Canada and others from northern Europe moved to these places more than a century ago to work in the mills. Most of them were Catholics and many of their descendants still are. The Sun Journal knows a story like this would be interesting to them.”
“I remember hearing there was an image of the Virgin Mary in the shadow of a streetlight somewhere in Massachusetts,” said a boy.
“Really?” I said. “I never knew about that one.”
“Lots of people were coming to see it every night until it was shut off.
“Wasn’t there another image of her on a grilled cheese sandwich?” asked a student in the back of the room. “It was sold for more than $20,000 on Ebay, I think.” More students snickered. Others appeared interested.
“I did hear about the grilled cheese sandwich,” I said. “Here’s a quote from the Catholic Church in Maine about the picture in the paper: ‘“It’s amazing to look at,” said Susan Barnard, spokeswoman for the Catholic Church in Maine after viewing a Sun Journal photograph of the image on Tuesday. “As far as the Church is concerned, we don’t jump to conclusions quickly. We often take a wait-and-see attitude; we wait to see if it caused conversions, improves the lives of people or miracles happen. We would never encourage people to go to Mexico in droves,” she said. “We just know in history that if this is a true sign, miracles will happen there. If it’s authentic, it will prove itself in time.”’”
“As far as I know,” I said, “there are very few appearances of the Virgin Mary considered real by the church. One was in Portugal near the end of World War I. Another was in France more than a century ago, and another was in Mexico - the country Mexico - about five hundred years ago.”
“According to the Mexico, Maine fire chief, the Virgin Mary image formed behind a picture on the wall as the room filled up with smoke,” I said. “Chief Gary Wentzell said the image was ‘striking.’ He’s a Baptist - another kind of Christian.”
“What do you think of the picture, Mr. McLaughlin?” a student asked me.
“Well, I’m a Roman Catholic,” I said. “I belong to the church right over there through the pines beyond the soccer field,” pointing toward the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church next to our school, “and I agree with what Susan Barnard said. People should wait and see what happens. There weren’t any miracles after the grilled cheese sandwich. Let’s not come to any conclusions yet about this one and just watch what else happens up there in Mexico, Maine.”
The story stayed on the front page for several days. The woman who owns the house had cut out the paneling on which the image appeared and indicated a willingness to sell it. I updated students on this information the following week. “She must have heard about the price someone paid for the grilled cheese sandwich,” said a boy.
“Maybe,” I said. “Trying to sell it sounds somewhat unmiraculous to me.”
“Maybe not,” said a girl. “You said her house is burned, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, if she gets a lot of money for the image on Ebay, she can fix it up better. That’s kind of a miracle, isn’t it?”
“Hmm,” I said. “Good point.”
“This is an unusual story,” I said to students while holding up the front page of the Lewiston Sun Journal. There was a large, color, above-the-fold picture of a woman staring at an image burned on a wall after a house fire in Mexico, Maine. Reading from the story, I said, “‘The image was created by smoke, according to the town’s fire chief. Others will say it is a miracle.’ I don’t think another newspaper would have run this story as prominently as the Sun Journal has. Do any of you know who the Virgin Mary is?”
Only three or four hands went up. Other students seemed perplexed, but curious.
“She’s the mother of Jesus,” said a boy.
“That’s what Christians believe,” I said. “Roman Catholics, the biggest group of Christians in this country and in the world, believe that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. Some other Christian groups are skeptical about that.”
“How could she be a virgin and be pregnant?” I heard one student say to another. I repeated the question and said, “The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was visited by the Holy Spirit and became pregnant with the son of God, but remained a virgin. Like I said, not all Christians believe that.”
Some students snickered and others said, “Shh.” I handed the newspaper to a student in the front seat and it went up and down the rows as each stared at the picture.
“I don’t think the Portland Press Herald or the The Boston Globe would feature this story so prominently,” I said. “Lewiston, as well as Mexico and Rumford, are mill towns. French-Canadian immigrants from Canada and others from northern Europe moved to these places more than a century ago to work in the mills. Most of them were Catholics and many of their descendants still are. The Sun Journal knows a story like this would be interesting to them.”
“I remember hearing there was an image of the Virgin Mary in the shadow of a streetlight somewhere in Massachusetts,” said a boy.
“Really?” I said. “I never knew about that one.”
“Lots of people were coming to see it every night until it was shut off.
“Wasn’t there another image of her on a grilled cheese sandwich?” asked a student in the back of the room. “It was sold for more than $20,000 on Ebay, I think.” More students snickered. Others appeared interested.
“I did hear about the grilled cheese sandwich,” I said. “Here’s a quote from the Catholic Church in Maine about the picture in the paper: ‘“It’s amazing to look at,” said Susan Barnard, spokeswoman for the Catholic Church in Maine after viewing a Sun Journal photograph of the image on Tuesday. “As far as the Church is concerned, we don’t jump to conclusions quickly. We often take a wait-and-see attitude; we wait to see if it caused conversions, improves the lives of people or miracles happen. We would never encourage people to go to Mexico in droves,” she said. “We just know in history that if this is a true sign, miracles will happen there. If it’s authentic, it will prove itself in time.”’”
“As far as I know,” I said, “there are very few appearances of the Virgin Mary considered real by the church. One was in Portugal near the end of World War I. Another was in France more than a century ago, and another was in Mexico - the country Mexico - about five hundred years ago.”
“According to the Mexico, Maine fire chief, the Virgin Mary image formed behind a picture on the wall as the room filled up with smoke,” I said. “Chief Gary Wentzell said the image was ‘striking.’ He’s a Baptist - another kind of Christian.”
“What do you think of the picture, Mr. McLaughlin?” a student asked me.
“Well, I’m a Roman Catholic,” I said. “I belong to the church right over there through the pines beyond the soccer field,” pointing toward the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church next to our school, “and I agree with what Susan Barnard said. People should wait and see what happens. There weren’t any miracles after the grilled cheese sandwich. Let’s not come to any conclusions yet about this one and just watch what else happens up there in Mexico, Maine.”
The story stayed on the front page for several days. The woman who owns the house had cut out the paneling on which the image appeared and indicated a willingness to sell it. I updated students on this information the following week. “She must have heard about the price someone paid for the grilled cheese sandwich,” said a boy.
“Maybe,” I said. “Trying to sell it sounds somewhat unmiraculous to me.”
“Maybe not,” said a girl. “You said her house is burned, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, if she gets a lot of money for the image on Ebay, she can fix it up better. That’s kind of a miracle, isn’t it?”
“Hmm,” I said. “Good point.”
The Owl
First published 1-27-06
The big bird broke me out of my daydream as it flew silently into my field of vision. I’d been sitting in my office and staring down across the field at the lower tree line when the creature landed on a limb to my left. It was larger than any wild bird I’d ever seen that close up. I leaned toward the window for a better look as it turned its head in my direction. It was an owl. He (I think he was a he) seemed to sense my presence behind the glass because he looked right at me. I froze and stared back at him, amazed. When I slowly leaned back in my chair, he flew to another tree further away. I reached for my binoculars and watched him looking from side to side and waiting for something resembling a meal to scurry across the snow below him.
It was only mid-afternoon and I’d always thought owls were nocturnal creatures. While I considered that, several blue jays flew into the tree where the owl first landed and jumped around from limb to limb, obviously agitated. Then five of them flew to other trees around the owl’s new perch - above him and below him. He kept turning his huge head around trying to keep the blue jays in view. Then several crows appeared and joined the remaining blue jays, raising a ruckus with their cawing. A couple of them flew over to join the braver jays harassing the owl. I reached for my digital camera, zoomed in and snapped a couple of pictures before the owl got fed up with the harassment and flew deeper in the woods. I hooked up the camera to my laptop, downloaded the images and pulled them up on the screen. This was way more interesting than what I’d been trying to write about. The images were grainy, but I could see a few more details than I noticed through the binoculars.
It dawned on me that I could search the web for information about owls, so I Googled “Owls in Maine.” After a few clicks, I had an image that looked a lot like the ones I’d taken. It was a Barred Owl, or “Strix Varia,” also known as a Swamp Owl, Hoot Owl, Eight Hooter, or Round Headed Owl. I hit a link beside the image and heard the owl’s call: “hoo, hoo, too-HOO; hoo, hoo, too-HOO-ooo.” Or, as the site spelled it out: “‘Who, cooks, for-you? Who, cooks, for-you, all?’ The last syllable drops off noticeably.” This was definitely the hooting my little grandson and I listen to, and attempt to mimic, while we’re sitting in the porch swing during early spring evenings. We cuddle in the dark with a blanket over us and try to answer the calls over the distant woods.
The Barred Owl can have a wingspan of over four feet and sits more than two feet high. I’m not sure if my owl was that big, but I wouldn’t be surprised. They are nocturnal, but will hunt on cloudy days before evening and it was cloudy that day. Barred Owls like voles and deer mice which abound in my field. They also like to hunt squirrels, and I can certainly identify with that. There were very few squirrels around my yard this past summer and I thought it was because I’d shot so many, but it looks like I’d had some help from old Mr. Owl. He also eats rabbits, weasels, snakes, woodpeckers, partridges, and jays. No wonder the blue jays were getting so nervous. Then it occurred to me that I learned all this without once having to get out of my chair. After the owl first flew into view, I could capture its image, listen to its call, determine its species, its size, range, life span, mating habits, diet, and preferred habitat - all without getting off my butt.
While I was marveling at wonders of today’s information technology and savoring the contrast between the digital equipment in my office and Nature’s wild carnivore on the other side of my window, the owl flew out of the woods and reclaimed its perch overlooking the field. I watched as he turned toward me again with concentric rings around his eyes and and I wondered if owls really were as wise as they appeared to be. I sincerely hoped they were because I’m in need of a heavy dose of wisdom lately and maybe I this owl experience was some kind of omen. Again, the blue jays and crows harassed him and I admired how he seemed to bear it serenely. He was trying to put food on the table (or the branch) while other creatures were doing their best to bother him.
The phone rang, interrupting my muse. I picked it up and a friend from Florida asked me what I was up to. I told him all about the owl and added that I still hadn’t gotten off my rear end and I could describe my experience to someone a thousand miles away. Modern technology is great, but I doubt that it will ever substitute for Nature’s ancient wisdom.
The big bird broke me out of my daydream as it flew silently into my field of vision. I’d been sitting in my office and staring down across the field at the lower tree line when the creature landed on a limb to my left. It was larger than any wild bird I’d ever seen that close up. I leaned toward the window for a better look as it turned its head in my direction. It was an owl. He (I think he was a he) seemed to sense my presence behind the glass because he looked right at me. I froze and stared back at him, amazed. When I slowly leaned back in my chair, he flew to another tree further away. I reached for my binoculars and watched him looking from side to side and waiting for something resembling a meal to scurry across the snow below him.
It was only mid-afternoon and I’d always thought owls were nocturnal creatures. While I considered that, several blue jays flew into the tree where the owl first landed and jumped around from limb to limb, obviously agitated. Then five of them flew to other trees around the owl’s new perch - above him and below him. He kept turning his huge head around trying to keep the blue jays in view. Then several crows appeared and joined the remaining blue jays, raising a ruckus with their cawing. A couple of them flew over to join the braver jays harassing the owl. I reached for my digital camera, zoomed in and snapped a couple of pictures before the owl got fed up with the harassment and flew deeper in the woods. I hooked up the camera to my laptop, downloaded the images and pulled them up on the screen. This was way more interesting than what I’d been trying to write about. The images were grainy, but I could see a few more details than I noticed through the binoculars.
It dawned on me that I could search the web for information about owls, so I Googled “Owls in Maine.” After a few clicks, I had an image that looked a lot like the ones I’d taken. It was a Barred Owl, or “Strix Varia,” also known as a Swamp Owl, Hoot Owl, Eight Hooter, or Round Headed Owl. I hit a link beside the image and heard the owl’s call: “hoo, hoo, too-HOO; hoo, hoo, too-HOO-ooo.” Or, as the site spelled it out: “‘Who, cooks, for-you? Who, cooks, for-you, all?’ The last syllable drops off noticeably.” This was definitely the hooting my little grandson and I listen to, and attempt to mimic, while we’re sitting in the porch swing during early spring evenings. We cuddle in the dark with a blanket over us and try to answer the calls over the distant woods.
The Barred Owl can have a wingspan of over four feet and sits more than two feet high. I’m not sure if my owl was that big, but I wouldn’t be surprised. They are nocturnal, but will hunt on cloudy days before evening and it was cloudy that day. Barred Owls like voles and deer mice which abound in my field. They also like to hunt squirrels, and I can certainly identify with that. There were very few squirrels around my yard this past summer and I thought it was because I’d shot so many, but it looks like I’d had some help from old Mr. Owl. He also eats rabbits, weasels, snakes, woodpeckers, partridges, and jays. No wonder the blue jays were getting so nervous. Then it occurred to me that I learned all this without once having to get out of my chair. After the owl first flew into view, I could capture its image, listen to its call, determine its species, its size, range, life span, mating habits, diet, and preferred habitat - all without getting off my butt.
While I was marveling at wonders of today’s information technology and savoring the contrast between the digital equipment in my office and Nature’s wild carnivore on the other side of my window, the owl flew out of the woods and reclaimed its perch overlooking the field. I watched as he turned toward me again with concentric rings around his eyes and and I wondered if owls really were as wise as they appeared to be. I sincerely hoped they were because I’m in need of a heavy dose of wisdom lately and maybe I this owl experience was some kind of omen. Again, the blue jays and crows harassed him and I admired how he seemed to bear it serenely. He was trying to put food on the table (or the branch) while other creatures were doing their best to bother him.
The phone rang, interrupting my muse. I picked it up and a friend from Florida asked me what I was up to. I told him all about the owl and added that I still hadn’t gotten off my rear end and I could describe my experience to someone a thousand miles away. Modern technology is great, but I doubt that it will ever substitute for Nature’s ancient wisdom.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Student to Soldier
Camel spiders got the most attention when former student and Iraqi veteran, Lieutenant Monroe Mann visited my classroom last week. A continuous play of three hundred photos taken during his Iraq tour showed on the screen at the front of the classroom. Three showed large spiders crawling inside his tent. Lieutenant Mann delivered prepared remarks while the photos changed every five seconds or so. When it was time for Q&A, the first questions were about spiders.
“They can run at about 15 mph - faster than a human, so you can’t get away from them,” Mann explained. When asked if they bite, he said they didn’t, but they were creepy-looking. Students all nodded agreement.
“When I was a student in this class fourteen years ago, the first Gulf War was going on. I had no idea that I’d be a soldier in the second Gulf War, but there I was.” A mutual friend had given me Monroe’s email address in Iraq last summer and I contacted him. His tour was ending in October and he agreed to come in and speak about his experiences as a military intelligence officer in northern Iraq, where his job included training the Iraqi army and gathering intelligence from captured terrorists.
Monroe started by explaining why he joined the military. He had finished college and was pursuing an acting career in New York City when he saw “Saving Private Ryan.” When Tom Hanks’s character said to Matt Damon’s character (Private Ryan), “Earn this. Earn it,” he realized that it was American soldiers who had given him the freedom to live the life he chose and he felt compelled to “earn it” - to do his part in this war we’re in now. He joined New York’s Army National Guard, went to basic training and officer candidate school, and then his unit was called to Iraq. “I had to put my life on hold for eighteen months, but it was worth it,” he said. “I served my country and I learned a lot while doing it.”
Pictures of Mann holding various kinds of weapons showed on the screen as talked. Students asked if he ever shot at anyone. “No, not personally,” he said. “When we were riding in our Humvee, my men would have to fire at some bad guys sometimes, but I never did myself.” When asked if any of his friends were killed, he told them about an Iraqi friend he worked with named Muhammed. “One day, I came in asking where Muhammed was, and they told me he had been burned to death,” Mann said. “Not a good way to die.”
“Most of our causalities there are from IEDs,” he explained, “Improvised Explosive Devices.” He described how terrorists take mortar rounds and wire them up to explode when American vehicles are going by. “There are car bombs, which we call VBIEDs or ‘Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices,” and there are SIEDs or Suicide IEDs, etc. We get shot at, but we don’t often get to shoot back, at least not where I served most of the time.
Students asked about pictures of men wearing blindfolds. Mann said they were captured terrorists he interrogated. Then he explained that 90% of those terrorists were not Iraqis, but were from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries in the Middle East. Most students were surprised. Several asked if the Iraqi people want us in their country. “Definitely,” said Mann. “About 300-400 Iraqis told me they were very grateful for what we were doing. Only two said they were not. I’d say about 90% don’t want us to leave until they’re ready to take over against the terrorists.”
Many students indicated they were surprised by his description of what it was like in Iraq - that what they saw on television
led them to believe that things were going badly for us. It was Mann’s assessment that reports by the media were not fabrications, but they were not showing the whole picture. They tended not to show good things that were happening there as a result of the American effort.
Lt. Mann ended on a lighter note. He taught students a few words from some of the languages spoken where he was. In Iraqi, “Shaku Maku” means, “How are you?” or “What’s up?” In Kurdish, “Choni” means “How are you?” and “Bashi” means
“Good.” He spent a lot of time with Kurds in northern Iraq.
Since he’s been back in the states, Monroe has reopened his business school for artists in Manhattan (UnstoppableArtists.com) and is promoting his new book, “Battle Cries for the Underdog” which he wrote in Iraq.
“They can run at about 15 mph - faster than a human, so you can’t get away from them,” Mann explained. When asked if they bite, he said they didn’t, but they were creepy-looking. Students all nodded agreement.
“When I was a student in this class fourteen years ago, the first Gulf War was going on. I had no idea that I’d be a soldier in the second Gulf War, but there I was.” A mutual friend had given me Monroe’s email address in Iraq last summer and I contacted him. His tour was ending in October and he agreed to come in and speak about his experiences as a military intelligence officer in northern Iraq, where his job included training the Iraqi army and gathering intelligence from captured terrorists.
Monroe started by explaining why he joined the military. He had finished college and was pursuing an acting career in New York City when he saw “Saving Private Ryan.” When Tom Hanks’s character said to Matt Damon’s character (Private Ryan), “Earn this. Earn it,” he realized that it was American soldiers who had given him the freedom to live the life he chose and he felt compelled to “earn it” - to do his part in this war we’re in now. He joined New York’s Army National Guard, went to basic training and officer candidate school, and then his unit was called to Iraq. “I had to put my life on hold for eighteen months, but it was worth it,” he said. “I served my country and I learned a lot while doing it.”
Pictures of Mann holding various kinds of weapons showed on the screen as talked. Students asked if he ever shot at anyone. “No, not personally,” he said. “When we were riding in our Humvee, my men would have to fire at some bad guys sometimes, but I never did myself.” When asked if any of his friends were killed, he told them about an Iraqi friend he worked with named Muhammed. “One day, I came in asking where Muhammed was, and they told me he had been burned to death,” Mann said. “Not a good way to die.”
“Most of our causalities there are from IEDs,” he explained, “Improvised Explosive Devices.” He described how terrorists take mortar rounds and wire them up to explode when American vehicles are going by. “There are car bombs, which we call VBIEDs or ‘Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices,” and there are SIEDs or Suicide IEDs, etc. We get shot at, but we don’t often get to shoot back, at least not where I served most of the time.
Students asked about pictures of men wearing blindfolds. Mann said they were captured terrorists he interrogated. Then he explained that 90% of those terrorists were not Iraqis, but were from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries in the Middle East. Most students were surprised. Several asked if the Iraqi people want us in their country. “Definitely,” said Mann. “About 300-400 Iraqis told me they were very grateful for what we were doing. Only two said they were not. I’d say about 90% don’t want us to leave until they’re ready to take over against the terrorists.”
Many students indicated they were surprised by his description of what it was like in Iraq - that what they saw on television
led them to believe that things were going badly for us. It was Mann’s assessment that reports by the media were not fabrications, but they were not showing the whole picture. They tended not to show good things that were happening there as a result of the American effort.
Lt. Mann ended on a lighter note. He taught students a few words from some of the languages spoken where he was. In Iraqi, “Shaku Maku” means, “How are you?” or “What’s up?” In Kurdish, “Choni” means “How are you?” and “Bashi” means
“Good.” He spent a lot of time with Kurds in northern Iraq.
Since he’s been back in the states, Monroe has reopened his business school for artists in Manhattan (UnstoppableArtists.com) and is promoting his new book, “Battle Cries for the Underdog” which he wrote in Iraq.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Hot Tub Chronicle
Published 11-27-05
Sitting in the hot tub, I can see mountains and stars above them. Coyotes howl and yip in the swamp below, probably chasing down a deer, perhaps one wounded by a hunter earlier today. Occasional headlights show through bare hardwoods along the Shave Hill Road a half mile off and from Route 113 in Chatham further away to the northwest. My wife’s large, unintelligent dog growls at the distant sounds. There’s something charming about being immersed in hot water outside on a cold evening with snow all around. It’s best when there are no lights on in the house behind me and nothing to hear but distant, muted sounds that would not be audible but for the cold quiet around me.
Blinking lights of four passenger jets move slowly from star to star, two going southeast and two northeast. I imagine passengers crowded in those narrow seats and stewardesses pushing carts between them high above the dark mountains. Seems like a lot of planes to be over my lonely portion of northern New England at once; maybe because it’s the night after Thanksgiving and people are heading home. Though it’s quiet now, it was bustling in the house behind me the night before, as my grown children and their partners were here for turkey dinner. My daughter Sarah and her husband, Nate, announced they were expecting their first child - my second grandchild - next August. Life goes on. Bearing children is a sign of hope. Hope is good. I think it’s a girl. We’ll see.
With a barely-audible drone, one jet disappeared in the trees to my left as another appeared over the mountains ten miles away. The worn-down mountains have been there for hundreds of millions of years. Coyotes arrived nine or ten thousand years ago after the ice melted and humans around the same time, but jets have been flying over these parts for only about fifty years. I visualized people in the plane because I’m out in the quiet night alone with nothing else to think about, but it’s doubtful any of them are aware of me. Nobody knows what I’m doing except my wife, who scampered into the house trailing steam a few minutes earlier to sauté the asparagus and portobella mushrooms to go with baked scallops we’d already prepared.
I don’t bring the phone out to the hot tub and don’t play music either. I leave the jets off and I’m alone in the dark with nature, distant jets, a glass of shiraz and my own thoughts. Even a barking dog can sound charming if it’s a half-mile away or more away. In that melieu, it’s surprising what comes to mind. When the kids were little and we had animals, it was my job to feed and water them morning and evening. It wasn’t easy to leave my seat near the wood stove in the old house and trudge out behind the barn to break ice out of plastic buckets and add fresh water, but the animals were always grateful. Though I wouldn’t have walked back there in the cold if I didn’t have to, it was nice to feel the quiet and see the Milky Way above, smell the cold forest and animals, feel the air numb my cheeks and watch the moon rise over the pines to the east. I’d usually enjoy it for a few minutes before going back in. Sitting in the hot tub reminded me of all that. It was much the same except for the smells. Vaporous chorine scent replaced the fragrance of woods, but it wasn’t unpleasant, bringing back as it did memories of my mother doing laundry in the basement of my childhood home. The bleach smell was on clean sheets I’d lay down on Saturday nights after my bath - fond memories I didn’t know were still somewhere in my memory.
For fifteen years, my wife has wanted a hot tub but the idea of sitting in steamy water with other people didn’t appeal to me. It seemed like a yuppie thing. For two years in Massachusetts I was technically a yuppie - Young, Urban and Professional, but I didn’t live the stereotype. However, now that I’ve lived in rural northern New England for twenty-eight years and grown to middle age, I guess I’m a MARPie - Middle-Aged, Rural Professional and I’m not the only one around here. I don’t know yet what the stereotype for a MARPie is supposed to be because I just invented the acronym, but this one likes relaxing in a hot tub. Next time I’m out there, I intend to ponder the MARPie stereotype for part II of the Hot Tub Chronicles.
Sitting in the hot tub, I can see mountains and stars above them. Coyotes howl and yip in the swamp below, probably chasing down a deer, perhaps one wounded by a hunter earlier today. Occasional headlights show through bare hardwoods along the Shave Hill Road a half mile off and from Route 113 in Chatham further away to the northwest. My wife’s large, unintelligent dog growls at the distant sounds. There’s something charming about being immersed in hot water outside on a cold evening with snow all around. It’s best when there are no lights on in the house behind me and nothing to hear but distant, muted sounds that would not be audible but for the cold quiet around me.
Blinking lights of four passenger jets move slowly from star to star, two going southeast and two northeast. I imagine passengers crowded in those narrow seats and stewardesses pushing carts between them high above the dark mountains. Seems like a lot of planes to be over my lonely portion of northern New England at once; maybe because it’s the night after Thanksgiving and people are heading home. Though it’s quiet now, it was bustling in the house behind me the night before, as my grown children and their partners were here for turkey dinner. My daughter Sarah and her husband, Nate, announced they were expecting their first child - my second grandchild - next August. Life goes on. Bearing children is a sign of hope. Hope is good. I think it’s a girl. We’ll see.
With a barely-audible drone, one jet disappeared in the trees to my left as another appeared over the mountains ten miles away. The worn-down mountains have been there for hundreds of millions of years. Coyotes arrived nine or ten thousand years ago after the ice melted and humans around the same time, but jets have been flying over these parts for only about fifty years. I visualized people in the plane because I’m out in the quiet night alone with nothing else to think about, but it’s doubtful any of them are aware of me. Nobody knows what I’m doing except my wife, who scampered into the house trailing steam a few minutes earlier to sauté the asparagus and portobella mushrooms to go with baked scallops we’d already prepared.
I don’t bring the phone out to the hot tub and don’t play music either. I leave the jets off and I’m alone in the dark with nature, distant jets, a glass of shiraz and my own thoughts. Even a barking dog can sound charming if it’s a half-mile away or more away. In that melieu, it’s surprising what comes to mind. When the kids were little and we had animals, it was my job to feed and water them morning and evening. It wasn’t easy to leave my seat near the wood stove in the old house and trudge out behind the barn to break ice out of plastic buckets and add fresh water, but the animals were always grateful. Though I wouldn’t have walked back there in the cold if I didn’t have to, it was nice to feel the quiet and see the Milky Way above, smell the cold forest and animals, feel the air numb my cheeks and watch the moon rise over the pines to the east. I’d usually enjoy it for a few minutes before going back in. Sitting in the hot tub reminded me of all that. It was much the same except for the smells. Vaporous chorine scent replaced the fragrance of woods, but it wasn’t unpleasant, bringing back as it did memories of my mother doing laundry in the basement of my childhood home. The bleach smell was on clean sheets I’d lay down on Saturday nights after my bath - fond memories I didn’t know were still somewhere in my memory.
For fifteen years, my wife has wanted a hot tub but the idea of sitting in steamy water with other people didn’t appeal to me. It seemed like a yuppie thing. For two years in Massachusetts I was technically a yuppie - Young, Urban and Professional, but I didn’t live the stereotype. However, now that I’ve lived in rural northern New England for twenty-eight years and grown to middle age, I guess I’m a MARPie - Middle-Aged, Rural Professional and I’m not the only one around here. I don’t know yet what the stereotype for a MARPie is supposed to be because I just invented the acronym, but this one likes relaxing in a hot tub. Next time I’m out there, I intend to ponder the MARPie stereotype for part II of the Hot Tub Chronicles.
Sex Education Paradox
Published 1-05-06
Anyone who read my “Sex Education Controversy” column here last week didn’t see the whole thing. Editors of two newspapers removed sections about controversial “workshops” presented to fourteen-year-olds in Massachusetts by state agencies. The workshops exposed students to sexual practices so bizarre that they couldn’t be printed here. The Boston Globe ignored those workshops, but it reported in a front-page, above-the-fold headline last month that teaching abstinence in school was “controversial.”
One editor emailed me, explaining: “I wanted to let you know I removed the portion of your column regarding “-------” While I see why you included it, it crossed the line regarding good taste and appropriateness for a community newspaper.” I understand the editor’s action, but it presents a paradox. I can’t name the practice here, even though it can be favorably described to fourteen-year-old public school students by state education officials paid with public funds. A search of the Globe’s archives showed no coverage of sex lessons anyone but the Marquis de Sade would consider outrageous. If you want to read an account, Google: “City Journal”; “Tufts” and “teach out” and you’ll hit on a comprehensive article describing what the Massachusetts Department of Education, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are pushing in schools across the country. Be prepared for a shock.
As usual, I gathered more material for the column than I could use in an 800-word piece. For example, sex education the way we know it originated with Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. PP is the biggest abortion provider in the United States - performing nearly a quarter million in 2004, sixteen percent of the total and not including chemical abortions resulting from PP’s distribution of the “morning after pill” to teenagers at their clinics.
Although Margaret Sanger is a feminist hero, few realize that she was also a major promoter of eugenics - the selective breeding of human beings as if they were dogs, horses or cattle. Planned Parenthood is just a new name for the first organization Sanger founded in the 1930s - the “American Birth Control League.” To the governing board of her ABCL she appointed fellow eugenicists and admirers of Adolf Hitler like Lothrop Stoddard. In his book “The Nazi Connection,” Stephan Kuhl writes of him:
“[Stoddard] even met personally with Adolf Hitler. William L. Shirer, an American colleague who had been in Germany since 1934, complained that the Reich minister for propaganda [Joseph Goebbels] gave special preference to Stoddard because his writings on racial subjects were ‘featured in Nazi school textbooks.’ . . . Stoddard claimed in 1940 that the ‘Jew problem’ is ‘already settled in principle and soon to be settled in fact by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich.’”
Stoddard was referring to the Holocaust - the ultimate eugenics program. In 1942, The ABCL changed its name to the “Planned Parenthood Federation of America” over Sanger’s objections. As Kuhl put it, the ABCL had a strong Nazi smell.
In the late 1960s, our two biggest teachers’ unions joined Planned Parenthood to push sex education in public schools. In last week’s column, I wrote that teen pregnancy rates have been skyrocketing ever since. Actually, it’s unwed teen pregnancies that have skyrocketed while total teen pregnancies have been declining. Up to about 1970, many teenagers tended to get married and raise their children in nuclear families. In 1970, only about 30% of all teenage births were to unwed mothers, but in 1990 about 70% were.
Thirteen-year-old girls show up at Planned Parenthood clinics for abortions after being impregnated by men several years older. State laws obligate Planned Parenthood to report such cases to human services agencies as sexual abuse or statutory rapes, but it seldom does. It also lobbies against laws in every state requiring them to notify parents when teenage girls seek abortions. This is the agency public schools across the country trust to design their sex education programs.
In spite of, or perhaps partly because of these programs, American teenagers are having sex more often, with more different partners, and at much younger ages than ever before. Consequently, sexually-transmitted diseases among teens are epidemic. Should we be surprised? Teens are bombarded with sex on television, in movies, in music and in advertising everywhere. When dancing, they simulate sex. The instruction they get at school is scrupulously values-neutral. They hear, “You really shouldn’t be having sex at your age, but we know you’re doing to anyway. So, here are several different ways it’s done, and here are some ways you can avoid getting pregnant while you’re doing it. Oh, and here’s how you put a condom on. Now I want you all to practice on these bananas until the bell rings.”
Teaching sex in a moral vacuum strongly implies to kids that morality has no place in sexual behavior. If that’s the only way it’s delivered, perhaps the schools would be better off not teaching it at all. Or, maybe it should be an extra-curricular, after-school activity that parents could choose for their children if they didn’t want to teach it at home. If schools continue to teach it during the regular school day, how about using at least half the time to teach them some effective abstinence strategies along with all the “how tos”?
Nah, too controversial.
Anyone who read my “Sex Education Controversy” column here last week didn’t see the whole thing. Editors of two newspapers removed sections about controversial “workshops” presented to fourteen-year-olds in Massachusetts by state agencies. The workshops exposed students to sexual practices so bizarre that they couldn’t be printed here. The Boston Globe ignored those workshops, but it reported in a front-page, above-the-fold headline last month that teaching abstinence in school was “controversial.”
One editor emailed me, explaining: “I wanted to let you know I removed the portion of your column regarding “-------” While I see why you included it, it crossed the line regarding good taste and appropriateness for a community newspaper.” I understand the editor’s action, but it presents a paradox. I can’t name the practice here, even though it can be favorably described to fourteen-year-old public school students by state education officials paid with public funds. A search of the Globe’s archives showed no coverage of sex lessons anyone but the Marquis de Sade would consider outrageous. If you want to read an account, Google: “City Journal”; “Tufts” and “teach out” and you’ll hit on a comprehensive article describing what the Massachusetts Department of Education, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are pushing in schools across the country. Be prepared for a shock.
As usual, I gathered more material for the column than I could use in an 800-word piece. For example, sex education the way we know it originated with Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. PP is the biggest abortion provider in the United States - performing nearly a quarter million in 2004, sixteen percent of the total and not including chemical abortions resulting from PP’s distribution of the “morning after pill” to teenagers at their clinics.
Although Margaret Sanger is a feminist hero, few realize that she was also a major promoter of eugenics - the selective breeding of human beings as if they were dogs, horses or cattle. Planned Parenthood is just a new name for the first organization Sanger founded in the 1930s - the “American Birth Control League.” To the governing board of her ABCL she appointed fellow eugenicists and admirers of Adolf Hitler like Lothrop Stoddard. In his book “The Nazi Connection,” Stephan Kuhl writes of him:
“[Stoddard] even met personally with Adolf Hitler. William L. Shirer, an American colleague who had been in Germany since 1934, complained that the Reich minister for propaganda [Joseph Goebbels] gave special preference to Stoddard because his writings on racial subjects were ‘featured in Nazi school textbooks.’ . . . Stoddard claimed in 1940 that the ‘Jew problem’ is ‘already settled in principle and soon to be settled in fact by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich.’”
Stoddard was referring to the Holocaust - the ultimate eugenics program. In 1942, The ABCL changed its name to the “Planned Parenthood Federation of America” over Sanger’s objections. As Kuhl put it, the ABCL had a strong Nazi smell.
In the late 1960s, our two biggest teachers’ unions joined Planned Parenthood to push sex education in public schools. In last week’s column, I wrote that teen pregnancy rates have been skyrocketing ever since. Actually, it’s unwed teen pregnancies that have skyrocketed while total teen pregnancies have been declining. Up to about 1970, many teenagers tended to get married and raise their children in nuclear families. In 1970, only about 30% of all teenage births were to unwed mothers, but in 1990 about 70% were.
Thirteen-year-old girls show up at Planned Parenthood clinics for abortions after being impregnated by men several years older. State laws obligate Planned Parenthood to report such cases to human services agencies as sexual abuse or statutory rapes, but it seldom does. It also lobbies against laws in every state requiring them to notify parents when teenage girls seek abortions. This is the agency public schools across the country trust to design their sex education programs.
In spite of, or perhaps partly because of these programs, American teenagers are having sex more often, with more different partners, and at much younger ages than ever before. Consequently, sexually-transmitted diseases among teens are epidemic. Should we be surprised? Teens are bombarded with sex on television, in movies, in music and in advertising everywhere. When dancing, they simulate sex. The instruction they get at school is scrupulously values-neutral. They hear, “You really shouldn’t be having sex at your age, but we know you’re doing to anyway. So, here are several different ways it’s done, and here are some ways you can avoid getting pregnant while you’re doing it. Oh, and here’s how you put a condom on. Now I want you all to practice on these bananas until the bell rings.”
Teaching sex in a moral vacuum strongly implies to kids that morality has no place in sexual behavior. If that’s the only way it’s delivered, perhaps the schools would be better off not teaching it at all. Or, maybe it should be an extra-curricular, after-school activity that parents could choose for their children if they didn’t want to teach it at home. If schools continue to teach it during the regular school day, how about using at least half the time to teach them some effective abstinence strategies along with all the “how tos”?
Nah, too controversial.
Sex Education Controversy
First published 12-27-05
It was an amazing sign of the times and it jumped off the page at me. In the first paragraph of it’s front-page, above-the-fold, headline story for Wednesday, December 21st, The Boston Globe said, “[it was] the state’s most aggressive effort yet to use a controversial method of teaching Bay State teenagers about sex.” What was this controversial method of teaching children about sex, you’re wondering? It must be really out there, huh? Nope. It’s not the least bit kinky. Nobody, not even my grandmother, would blush if I were to explain it in detail. The headline read: “State to push abstinence in schools.” According to the Globe’s way of looking at the world, teaching kids not to have sex is controversial. However, using public tax money to instruct Massachusetts teenagers in bizarre ways to “do it” is no big deal, not even worth mentioning.
The Globe featured this “controversy” as the most important thing that had happened in the world the previous day for its 500,000 readers. It reminded me of another kind of Massachusetts public school sex instruction a few years ago I considered vastly more controversial than the “Don’t do it” program. Public school students and teachers attended a “teach out” at Tufts University at which the Massachusetts Department of Education and other state employees led a workshop in which the bizarre sexual practice of “fisting” - inserting one’s fist into the anus or vagina of a sex partner - was described. When students at this workshop asked why anybody would want to do anything like that, the Massachusetts Department of Education official said, “[it’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be close and intimate with.”
Now that’s what I call controversial, so I searched the Globe’s archives for how they covered the story. In their search engine, I typed “fisting, public school, students, Newton” because I knew there were fourteen-year-olds (the age I teach) from Newton’s school system in attendance. Guess how many hits I got? Zero, zilch, none. Evidently, the Globe didn’t think that grotesque workshop controversial enough to even mention - certainly not the lead story of the day. However, when I typed the same five words into Google, I got 108,000 hits. What does that tell us about The Boston Globe’s manipulation of news? And more importantly: what is happening to us?
In spite of the Globe’s best efforts to prevent it, at least Massachusetts is going to use the federal money offered for teaching sexual abstinence. My state, Maine, is one of only three (all blue states) in the country which chose not to accept the funds. “This money is more harmful than it is good,” said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, Maine’s Public Health Director. According to an article by Paul Carrier in Augusta’s Morning Sentinel, “In the past, the state has used the [$165,000] to run public-service announcements on television that encouraged young people to avoid having sex prematurely . . . that used the recurring tag line ‘not me, not now.’” We all remember those. But now Mills claims that Maine’s teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have declined and the state doesn’t need the money. I guess teen sex just isn’t a problem anymore here in Maine, huh Dr. Mills?
Mills claimed the federal money has to be spent on “abstinence only” programs which instruct children that the only appropriate place for sex is within marriage. But that would discriminate against gay and lesbian students who can’t marry here in Maine. And, she said it would prevent the state from providing “comprehensive information” for sexually-active teens. It’s strange for Mills to make that claim because, according to Massachusetts Governor Romney’s communications director who is quoted in the Globe, “the [Massachusetts abstinence] program will be taught in addition to comprehensive sex education programs already in place, and that students will learn about contraception methods.” I can’t believe the feds are going to allow it in Massachusetts and disallow it in Maine.
Ever since “comprehensive sex education” has been taught in the nation’s public schools, pregnancy, abortion, and sexually-transmitted diseases among teenagers have been skyrocketing. Proponents argue that correlation is not causation and that it would have been even worse had sex education not been taught. Hmm. When the results of your program are just the opposite of what were intended, it’s not exactly a vote of confidence in its effectiveness.
Now consider that Maine has been spending federal abstinence money for ten years and Maine’s teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have been going down - so much so that Dr. Mills is now claiming we don’t need to spend any more. Instead, she wants to protect and renew the “comprehensive” approach regardless of its dismal long-term results nationally, and trash the one which seems to have been much more effective.
Why not take the lead from Governor Romney in Massachusetts and do both? Or is that too controversial here in Maine also?
It was an amazing sign of the times and it jumped off the page at me. In the first paragraph of it’s front-page, above-the-fold, headline story for Wednesday, December 21st, The Boston Globe said, “[it was] the state’s most aggressive effort yet to use a controversial method of teaching Bay State teenagers about sex.” What was this controversial method of teaching children about sex, you’re wondering? It must be really out there, huh? Nope. It’s not the least bit kinky. Nobody, not even my grandmother, would blush if I were to explain it in detail. The headline read: “State to push abstinence in schools.” According to the Globe’s way of looking at the world, teaching kids not to have sex is controversial. However, using public tax money to instruct Massachusetts teenagers in bizarre ways to “do it” is no big deal, not even worth mentioning.
The Globe featured this “controversy” as the most important thing that had happened in the world the previous day for its 500,000 readers. It reminded me of another kind of Massachusetts public school sex instruction a few years ago I considered vastly more controversial than the “Don’t do it” program. Public school students and teachers attended a “teach out” at Tufts University at which the Massachusetts Department of Education and other state employees led a workshop in which the bizarre sexual practice of “fisting” - inserting one’s fist into the anus or vagina of a sex partner - was described. When students at this workshop asked why anybody would want to do anything like that, the Massachusetts Department of Education official said, “[it’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be close and intimate with.”
Now that’s what I call controversial, so I searched the Globe’s archives for how they covered the story. In their search engine, I typed “fisting, public school, students, Newton” because I knew there were fourteen-year-olds (the age I teach) from Newton’s school system in attendance. Guess how many hits I got? Zero, zilch, none. Evidently, the Globe didn’t think that grotesque workshop controversial enough to even mention - certainly not the lead story of the day. However, when I typed the same five words into Google, I got 108,000 hits. What does that tell us about The Boston Globe’s manipulation of news? And more importantly: what is happening to us?
In spite of the Globe’s best efforts to prevent it, at least Massachusetts is going to use the federal money offered for teaching sexual abstinence. My state, Maine, is one of only three (all blue states) in the country which chose not to accept the funds. “This money is more harmful than it is good,” said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, Maine’s Public Health Director. According to an article by Paul Carrier in Augusta’s Morning Sentinel, “In the past, the state has used the [$165,000] to run public-service announcements on television that encouraged young people to avoid having sex prematurely . . . that used the recurring tag line ‘not me, not now.’” We all remember those. But now Mills claims that Maine’s teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have declined and the state doesn’t need the money. I guess teen sex just isn’t a problem anymore here in Maine, huh Dr. Mills?
Mills claimed the federal money has to be spent on “abstinence only” programs which instruct children that the only appropriate place for sex is within marriage. But that would discriminate against gay and lesbian students who can’t marry here in Maine. And, she said it would prevent the state from providing “comprehensive information” for sexually-active teens. It’s strange for Mills to make that claim because, according to Massachusetts Governor Romney’s communications director who is quoted in the Globe, “the [Massachusetts abstinence] program will be taught in addition to comprehensive sex education programs already in place, and that students will learn about contraception methods.” I can’t believe the feds are going to allow it in Massachusetts and disallow it in Maine.
Ever since “comprehensive sex education” has been taught in the nation’s public schools, pregnancy, abortion, and sexually-transmitted diseases among teenagers have been skyrocketing. Proponents argue that correlation is not causation and that it would have been even worse had sex education not been taught. Hmm. When the results of your program are just the opposite of what were intended, it’s not exactly a vote of confidence in its effectiveness.
Now consider that Maine has been spending federal abstinence money for ten years and Maine’s teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have been going down - so much so that Dr. Mills is now claiming we don’t need to spend any more. Instead, she wants to protect and renew the “comprehensive” approach regardless of its dismal long-term results nationally, and trash the one which seems to have been much more effective.
Why not take the lead from Governor Romney in Massachusetts and do both? Or is that too controversial here in Maine also?
Hot Tub Chronicle II
First published 12-21-05
For many years my wife told me she wanted an outdoor hot tub to ease the strain of Maine’s winter. I’d listen and visualize the getting in and the getting out. An image of my wet, bare feet sticking to the hard-frozen ground the way a boy’s tongue sticks to a frozen metal pole of a school yard swing set played out in my mind’s eye. Looking behind me, I could see in my footprints the skin from the bottom of my bare feet, followed by others stained red with my blood. The hot tub idea had little appeal for me.
What I’ve discovered, however, is that only getting in is difficult. Getting out is easy. In my fleece bathrobe and slippers, I go out the door and into the frigid night shivering. I lift off the cover over the hot water and set it aside before removing my robe and stepping out of my slippers. There is a second of freezing misery as, shaking with cold, I swing my legs over the edge of the tub. After I’m up to my neck in hot liquid I can sigh with relief. Tense muscles loosen in the warm buoyancy and my internal temperature rises. In only a few seconds I’m relaxed and listening to the silence.
There’s probably no such thing as total silence, really - not for the average person here on earth anyway. Maybe it exists in space where there’s no atmosphere to vibrate and carry sound. Maybe it exists for the totally deaf, but for the rest of us there are just different degrees of noise. In the hot tub on a winter evening, I relish the relative silence around me. As mentioned in an earlier column, there’s no music and no telephone with me when I go out there. Neither are there any lights on in the house behind to leak out the windows and intrude on the light of the moon, the stars, and from distant houses on the high western bank of the Cold River in Stow and Chatham. Occasionally a faint, flickering light is visible on top of Mount Washington. The only sounds are those from nature, like coyotes or wind in the trees. Occasionally, there’s a distant whine of truck tires on Route 5 a mile or more away and down the hill - just loud enough to hear, but not intrusive on my mood. Sometimes there’s the drone of a passenger jet five miles up among the stars. It’s not really silence, but some might call it that.
We’re programmed to respond to certain sounds in certain ways. Genuine laughter elicits a positive reaction from anyone within earshot. Crying stirs an agitated response. Car horns during a traffic jam can be stressful, but listening to a baby gooing and gurgling is endearing. The soft, nearly-silent sounds of a winter night relax me. Maybe I’m hard-wired by the Creator to respond that way, or maybe it’s the human software bundle I came into the world with.
If I relax them totally, my arms float out in front of me - a rather strange sensation. The old bathtubs of my youth weren’t deep enough for that and neither were the little swimming pools in the yard. By the time I could swim in the lakes and ponds, I was too adventuresome to linger in the shallow water and see if my arms floated. Could warm, semi-weightless sensations tap unconscious memories of when we were in utero? The womb would have been warm and cozy too. Or maybe such thoughts are residue of the psychobabble I heard in all those liberal arts courses. Nonetheless, I imagine other mammals out there in the winter night. I visualize mice snug in in the woodpile in their nests of leaves and the wooly material they manage to accumulate from somewhere - probably insulation from one of our vehicles in the dooryard. I visualize chipmunks curled up snugly while deep in the ground under the snow. I feel an affinity for other warm-blooded creatures, but not for the grubs or the reptiles I know are out there too - another result of programming from the Creator I guess.
As I said, getting out of the tub is easy. Last Friday’s storm blew a half-inch of snow around the patio and I actually stood in it, barefoot and naked, while I put the cover back on before going inside. It was a strange sensation. I was aware of the cold, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I had no urge to roll around in the snow as some do, but walking in it left no bloody footprints behind me.
For many years my wife told me she wanted an outdoor hot tub to ease the strain of Maine’s winter. I’d listen and visualize the getting in and the getting out. An image of my wet, bare feet sticking to the hard-frozen ground the way a boy’s tongue sticks to a frozen metal pole of a school yard swing set played out in my mind’s eye. Looking behind me, I could see in my footprints the skin from the bottom of my bare feet, followed by others stained red with my blood. The hot tub idea had little appeal for me.
What I’ve discovered, however, is that only getting in is difficult. Getting out is easy. In my fleece bathrobe and slippers, I go out the door and into the frigid night shivering. I lift off the cover over the hot water and set it aside before removing my robe and stepping out of my slippers. There is a second of freezing misery as, shaking with cold, I swing my legs over the edge of the tub. After I’m up to my neck in hot liquid I can sigh with relief. Tense muscles loosen in the warm buoyancy and my internal temperature rises. In only a few seconds I’m relaxed and listening to the silence.
There’s probably no such thing as total silence, really - not for the average person here on earth anyway. Maybe it exists in space where there’s no atmosphere to vibrate and carry sound. Maybe it exists for the totally deaf, but for the rest of us there are just different degrees of noise. In the hot tub on a winter evening, I relish the relative silence around me. As mentioned in an earlier column, there’s no music and no telephone with me when I go out there. Neither are there any lights on in the house behind to leak out the windows and intrude on the light of the moon, the stars, and from distant houses on the high western bank of the Cold River in Stow and Chatham. Occasionally a faint, flickering light is visible on top of Mount Washington. The only sounds are those from nature, like coyotes or wind in the trees. Occasionally, there’s a distant whine of truck tires on Route 5 a mile or more away and down the hill - just loud enough to hear, but not intrusive on my mood. Sometimes there’s the drone of a passenger jet five miles up among the stars. It’s not really silence, but some might call it that.
We’re programmed to respond to certain sounds in certain ways. Genuine laughter elicits a positive reaction from anyone within earshot. Crying stirs an agitated response. Car horns during a traffic jam can be stressful, but listening to a baby gooing and gurgling is endearing. The soft, nearly-silent sounds of a winter night relax me. Maybe I’m hard-wired by the Creator to respond that way, or maybe it’s the human software bundle I came into the world with.
If I relax them totally, my arms float out in front of me - a rather strange sensation. The old bathtubs of my youth weren’t deep enough for that and neither were the little swimming pools in the yard. By the time I could swim in the lakes and ponds, I was too adventuresome to linger in the shallow water and see if my arms floated. Could warm, semi-weightless sensations tap unconscious memories of when we were in utero? The womb would have been warm and cozy too. Or maybe such thoughts are residue of the psychobabble I heard in all those liberal arts courses. Nonetheless, I imagine other mammals out there in the winter night. I visualize mice snug in in the woodpile in their nests of leaves and the wooly material they manage to accumulate from somewhere - probably insulation from one of our vehicles in the dooryard. I visualize chipmunks curled up snugly while deep in the ground under the snow. I feel an affinity for other warm-blooded creatures, but not for the grubs or the reptiles I know are out there too - another result of programming from the Creator I guess.
As I said, getting out of the tub is easy. Last Friday’s storm blew a half-inch of snow around the patio and I actually stood in it, barefoot and naked, while I put the cover back on before going inside. It was a strange sensation. I was aware of the cold, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I had no urge to roll around in the snow as some do, but walking in it left no bloody footprints behind me.
Changes in Churches
First published 12-14-05
Catholics in the United States are losing priests but gaining parishioners. Episcopalians are gaining priests but losing parishioners. Catholics and Episcopalians are changing, but in different ways and the interplay it getting interesting.
Catholic priests have been in short supply here in the Portland, Maine diocese, necessitating a reorganization of how they are to be distributed across parishes. There are just not enough for every parish to have one. Now the Vatican has reiterated forcefully that homosexuals cannot be admitted to seminaries. The rule isn’t new, but since the 1960s American and European seminaries have been winking at it and allowing more and more to become priests. Many have become bishops as well and probably cardinals, but not openly. Seminary rectors and other church officials estimate that about 40-50% of US Catholic priests are homosexual. Under Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican is acknowledging what has been obvious to many - that Catholic sex abuse scandal is mostly the result of homosexual priests and the bishops who protect them. More than 85% of sexual abuse victims have been adolescent boys and over 200 Catholic priests have died of AIDS over the same period. Under Pope Benedict, not-quite-open, but not-so-closeted homosexual priests are threatening to leave the church, worsening the already-severe priest shortage.
Other Catholics believe a strictly-enforced ban on homosexual priests will have the opposite effect; it will increase the number of men going into seminary. In his book “Good-bye Good Men,” Michael Rose makes this case quite convincingly. He documents how the “lavender mafia” within seminaries and many dioceses have turned away more traditional candidates. The few seminaries who have remained faithful to church teachings, like one in Omaha, have no shortage of straight applicants. Liberal seminaries, like the one in Boston which graduated so many homosexual priests, are largely empty.
The Episcopal Church is dealing with its homosexual challenge differently. It has trumpeted its gay and lesbian priests, and lately, Bishop Robinson. They have plenty of priests, but are losing the parishioners to serve. Other Episcopal priests are not comfortable with these developments and consider leaving, but they’ve been informed that they would lose their pensions if they did. Some whole parishes are outraged and are trying to secede from the Episcopal Church. The leadership responds by claiming that the diocese owns the parishes and not the parishioners, so the churchgoers can go, but they have to leave behind the property. The Catholic Church, under siege from homosexual-abuse lawsuits, is claiming just the opposite - that the local parishes are owned by the parishioners and not the diocese.
Lawsuits against the Catholic Church in the United States have surpassed $1 billion. They are filed against the local dioceses wherever the abuse occurred. The Spokane, Washington diocese, for instance, filed for bankruptcy claiming inability to pay the huge homosexual abuse settlements against it. Attorneys for the men who were abused as adolescents claim that the the diocese should not be allowed bankruptcy protection, but should instead liquidate parish properties and pay off the settlements. The diocese claims that the properties are owned by local parishes and the diocese has no authority to sell them, citing Canon Law. The Catholic News Service then reported that “U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Patricia Williams of Spokane ruled Aug. 26 [2005] that civil property laws prevail in a bankruptcy proceeding despite any internal church laws that might bar a bishop from full control over parish assets.” The diocese is appealing.
As if church ownership issues weren’t confusing enough, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, where the homosexual abuse scandal was worst, began closing local parishes and selling off the assets, claiming the diocese owned them. Meanwhile, the Portland, Oregon and Tucson, Arizona dioceses, however, have filed bankruptcy just as Spokane did and legal experts expect the ownership issue will go all the way to the US Supreme Court before it is settled. President Bush’s two Supreme Court appointments are conservative Catholics. When Alito is confirmed, he will join coreligionists Roberts and Scalia to rule on these property issues.
Meanwhile, if homosexual Catholic priests who are threatening to leave and join the Episcopalians actually do so, they will be able to wave at straight Episcopal priests going in the other direction to join up with the Catholics. Conservative Episcopal priests have been welcomed into the Catholic Church, some even with their wives. It makes one wonder how that goes down with straight Catholic priests who have lived for years under a vow of celibacy.
Catholics in the United States are losing priests but gaining parishioners. Episcopalians are gaining priests but losing parishioners. Catholics and Episcopalians are changing, but in different ways and the interplay it getting interesting.
Catholic priests have been in short supply here in the Portland, Maine diocese, necessitating a reorganization of how they are to be distributed across parishes. There are just not enough for every parish to have one. Now the Vatican has reiterated forcefully that homosexuals cannot be admitted to seminaries. The rule isn’t new, but since the 1960s American and European seminaries have been winking at it and allowing more and more to become priests. Many have become bishops as well and probably cardinals, but not openly. Seminary rectors and other church officials estimate that about 40-50% of US Catholic priests are homosexual. Under Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican is acknowledging what has been obvious to many - that Catholic sex abuse scandal is mostly the result of homosexual priests and the bishops who protect them. More than 85% of sexual abuse victims have been adolescent boys and over 200 Catholic priests have died of AIDS over the same period. Under Pope Benedict, not-quite-open, but not-so-closeted homosexual priests are threatening to leave the church, worsening the already-severe priest shortage.
Other Catholics believe a strictly-enforced ban on homosexual priests will have the opposite effect; it will increase the number of men going into seminary. In his book “Good-bye Good Men,” Michael Rose makes this case quite convincingly. He documents how the “lavender mafia” within seminaries and many dioceses have turned away more traditional candidates. The few seminaries who have remained faithful to church teachings, like one in Omaha, have no shortage of straight applicants. Liberal seminaries, like the one in Boston which graduated so many homosexual priests, are largely empty.
The Episcopal Church is dealing with its homosexual challenge differently. It has trumpeted its gay and lesbian priests, and lately, Bishop Robinson. They have plenty of priests, but are losing the parishioners to serve. Other Episcopal priests are not comfortable with these developments and consider leaving, but they’ve been informed that they would lose their pensions if they did. Some whole parishes are outraged and are trying to secede from the Episcopal Church. The leadership responds by claiming that the diocese owns the parishes and not the parishioners, so the churchgoers can go, but they have to leave behind the property. The Catholic Church, under siege from homosexual-abuse lawsuits, is claiming just the opposite - that the local parishes are owned by the parishioners and not the diocese.
Lawsuits against the Catholic Church in the United States have surpassed $1 billion. They are filed against the local dioceses wherever the abuse occurred. The Spokane, Washington diocese, for instance, filed for bankruptcy claiming inability to pay the huge homosexual abuse settlements against it. Attorneys for the men who were abused as adolescents claim that the the diocese should not be allowed bankruptcy protection, but should instead liquidate parish properties and pay off the settlements. The diocese claims that the properties are owned by local parishes and the diocese has no authority to sell them, citing Canon Law. The Catholic News Service then reported that “U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Patricia Williams of Spokane ruled Aug. 26 [2005] that civil property laws prevail in a bankruptcy proceeding despite any internal church laws that might bar a bishop from full control over parish assets.” The diocese is appealing.
As if church ownership issues weren’t confusing enough, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, where the homosexual abuse scandal was worst, began closing local parishes and selling off the assets, claiming the diocese owned them. Meanwhile, the Portland, Oregon and Tucson, Arizona dioceses, however, have filed bankruptcy just as Spokane did and legal experts expect the ownership issue will go all the way to the US Supreme Court before it is settled. President Bush’s two Supreme Court appointments are conservative Catholics. When Alito is confirmed, he will join coreligionists Roberts and Scalia to rule on these property issues.
Meanwhile, if homosexual Catholic priests who are threatening to leave and join the Episcopalians actually do so, they will be able to wave at straight Episcopal priests going in the other direction to join up with the Catholics. Conservative Episcopal priests have been welcomed into the Catholic Church, some even with their wives. It makes one wonder how that goes down with straight Catholic priests who have lived for years under a vow of celibacy.
Shooting Squirrels
This column was first published 12-8-05
Red squirrels are a pain and I shoot them whenever possible. Squirrels on my property or the properties I take care of here in Lovell are subject to the death penalty because those little red buggers cause a lot of damage. (Besides teaching and writing, I’ve been a caretaker for twenty years.) A pellet gun with a scope is my method of execution and if they’re in range, I don’t often miss. Sometimes they’re dispatched with one shot, but usually they need two or three shots before they stop twitching. I leave the little corpses where they fall and some other animal eats them up. By morning of the next day, not a trace is left. I shoot gray squirrels too, but not as often. They don’t come around much anymore. Maybe they noticed their cousins’ cadavers and decided to look for other habitat. I have no mercy on porcupines either. Rules of engagement for them? Shoot on sight with a .22.
It’s amazing that so many people put up with nuisance animals: deer eating their gardens, beavers flooding their homes, or coyotes eating their cats and terrorizing their children’s school yards. Yes, we live in an ultraliberal part of the country where guns and traps are considered evil and humans are less noble than animals, but don’t they know that coyotes chase down deer and disembowel them on the run? What would they propose to do with those marauding predators? Capture them and send them to sensitivity training?
People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is enraged that birds are slaughtered to prevent the spread of bird flu. What do they think should be done? Let it continue until all birds are infected and the virus spreads to humans? A friend emailed me with helpful information about bird flu symptoms. Watch out if you have high fever; nausea; stomach cramps; diarrhea and an overpowering urge to defecate on statues or windshields. So far, I’m symptom free.
Speaking of birds, you PETA activists who want to ban fish hooks because they’re painful to bass and trout, what about bald eagles and ospreys grabbing fish with sharp talons, then carrying them to nests to be ripped apart alive with those sharp hooked beaks? Should sensitivity training be mandated for them too?
Perhaps you read about the bird murder in Holland. People were setting up dominoes in a large hall attempting to break the Guinness world record when a common sparrow flew in and knocked over 23,000 of them. Someone chased down the bird, shot it, and got arrested. Apparently “Common Sparrow” is a misnomer. That little bird was on the Netherlands Endangered Species List.
Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson hit a dove with his fast ball back in 2001, according to ESPN’s web site. “It exploded, feathers and everything, just ‘poof!’” said the batter. “There were nothing but feathers laying on home plate. I never saw the ball, nothing but feathers.” Luckily for Johnson, that dove was not endangered as a species, but only from flying too close to his pitch. Dave Winfield wasn’t so lucky, however, when he threw a ball and hit a protected seagull. The gull died and Winfield was arrested after the game for animal cruelty. Yankee manager Billy Martin summed it up thusly: “They say he hit the gull on purpose. They wouldn't say that if they’d seen the throws he’d been making all year. It’s the first time he’s hit the cutoff man.”
According to seagull research by Wisconsin blogger Gavin C. Schmitt, “Seagulls fall under the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. This law, a treaty between the United States and Canada (and later Russia, Mexico and Japan), makes it illegal to kill, sell, or capture certain birds mentioned on a list by the Act. Even dead birds and bird parts such as eggs and feathers, are protected.”
So, the federal government is obligated to protect seagulls even if they’re dead? It’s a struggle to make sense of this, especially when I read stories like the one last month in Lewiston’s Sun Journal: “Feds killing gulls to fight germs in lake.” Forty gulls had been shot and more had been sentenced to death. Why this departure from federal treaty obligations you may wonder? “The birds are suspected of defecating in the water,” suggests staff writer Doug Fletcher. Hmm. Where else did these crack federal agents suspect that seagulls would defecate besides on the occasional windsheld? Has it occurred to them that fish are probably defecating in there too?
After shooting the gulls, will federal agents guard their corpses? For how long? After the flesh rots away, will they remain on duty over the feathers? If so, maybe they’ll be too busy to bother me about shooting squirrels and porcupines.
Red squirrels are a pain and I shoot them whenever possible. Squirrels on my property or the properties I take care of here in Lovell are subject to the death penalty because those little red buggers cause a lot of damage. (Besides teaching and writing, I’ve been a caretaker for twenty years.) A pellet gun with a scope is my method of execution and if they’re in range, I don’t often miss. Sometimes they’re dispatched with one shot, but usually they need two or three shots before they stop twitching. I leave the little corpses where they fall and some other animal eats them up. By morning of the next day, not a trace is left. I shoot gray squirrels too, but not as often. They don’t come around much anymore. Maybe they noticed their cousins’ cadavers and decided to look for other habitat. I have no mercy on porcupines either. Rules of engagement for them? Shoot on sight with a .22.
It’s amazing that so many people put up with nuisance animals: deer eating their gardens, beavers flooding their homes, or coyotes eating their cats and terrorizing their children’s school yards. Yes, we live in an ultraliberal part of the country where guns and traps are considered evil and humans are less noble than animals, but don’t they know that coyotes chase down deer and disembowel them on the run? What would they propose to do with those marauding predators? Capture them and send them to sensitivity training?
People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is enraged that birds are slaughtered to prevent the spread of bird flu. What do they think should be done? Let it continue until all birds are infected and the virus spreads to humans? A friend emailed me with helpful information about bird flu symptoms. Watch out if you have high fever; nausea; stomach cramps; diarrhea and an overpowering urge to defecate on statues or windshields. So far, I’m symptom free.
Speaking of birds, you PETA activists who want to ban fish hooks because they’re painful to bass and trout, what about bald eagles and ospreys grabbing fish with sharp talons, then carrying them to nests to be ripped apart alive with those sharp hooked beaks? Should sensitivity training be mandated for them too?
Perhaps you read about the bird murder in Holland. People were setting up dominoes in a large hall attempting to break the Guinness world record when a common sparrow flew in and knocked over 23,000 of them. Someone chased down the bird, shot it, and got arrested. Apparently “Common Sparrow” is a misnomer. That little bird was on the Netherlands Endangered Species List.
Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson hit a dove with his fast ball back in 2001, according to ESPN’s web site. “It exploded, feathers and everything, just ‘poof!’” said the batter. “There were nothing but feathers laying on home plate. I never saw the ball, nothing but feathers.” Luckily for Johnson, that dove was not endangered as a species, but only from flying too close to his pitch. Dave Winfield wasn’t so lucky, however, when he threw a ball and hit a protected seagull. The gull died and Winfield was arrested after the game for animal cruelty. Yankee manager Billy Martin summed it up thusly: “They say he hit the gull on purpose. They wouldn't say that if they’d seen the throws he’d been making all year. It’s the first time he’s hit the cutoff man.”
According to seagull research by Wisconsin blogger Gavin C. Schmitt, “Seagulls fall under the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. This law, a treaty between the United States and Canada (and later Russia, Mexico and Japan), makes it illegal to kill, sell, or capture certain birds mentioned on a list by the Act. Even dead birds and bird parts such as eggs and feathers, are protected.”
So, the federal government is obligated to protect seagulls even if they’re dead? It’s a struggle to make sense of this, especially when I read stories like the one last month in Lewiston’s Sun Journal: “Feds killing gulls to fight germs in lake.” Forty gulls had been shot and more had been sentenced to death. Why this departure from federal treaty obligations you may wonder? “The birds are suspected of defecating in the water,” suggests staff writer Doug Fletcher. Hmm. Where else did these crack federal agents suspect that seagulls would defecate besides on the occasional windsheld? Has it occurred to them that fish are probably defecating in there too?
After shooting the gulls, will federal agents guard their corpses? For how long? After the flesh rots away, will they remain on duty over the feathers? If so, maybe they’ll be too busy to bother me about shooting squirrels and porcupines.
Paris Riots in Class
First published 11-14-05
On the blackboard, I wrote four questions under the heading “Riots in France.” The first asked, “Who is rioting?” The others asked, “What happens during the riots?”; “Why are the riots occurring?” and “What is the French government doing about them?” Students were instructed to copy the questions on a piece of paper, leaving space under each for answers. They they were to use search engines on their laptops to find information. The riots had, at that point, been occurring for two weeks.
“How should we answer the first question, Mr. McLaughlin?” a girl asked.
“Use your brain,” I said. “Don’t use mine. It’s a simple question: ‘Who is rioting?’ Find an answer.”
She didn’t like my response, but I didn’t want to influence her search. I knew the answer was being reported in different ways and that’s what I wanted students to find out.
Pretty soon, several started raising their hands. When I called on a boy, he started reading from the screen of his laptop: French youths rioted for the thirteenth night . . .”
“Hold on,” I said. “I’d prefer that you each write the answers on your paper before we go over them as a group. I want you to process the information through your brains rather than reading it from the screen.” When most were done researching, I said, “Okay. Who is rioting?”
The boy had his hand up again. “Youths,” he said.
“Youths,” I repeated. “Who else found that?”
Several hands went up.
“Any other answers to ‘Who is rioting?’ ” I asked.
“Immigrant youths,” said a girl.
“Immigrant youths,” I repeated. “Any other answers?”
“Muslim immigrant youths or the children of Muslim Arab and African immigrants,” said another girl.
I went over to a world map and called for everyone’s attention. “Here is France,” I said, “and here is North Africa across the Mediterranean. During the 1800s, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia became French colonies. After World War II there was a rebellion in Algeria and it became independent in 1962. After that, France’s population didn’t go up much as people used birth control more and abortion became available. Immigration from the former colonies was encouraged and now Muslim African and Arab immigrants, and their descendents, comprise about 12% of France’s 60 million people. However, they’re not assimilating well. That means they’re not joining French culture as fully as France would like. They live in France, but stay to themselves keep their own ways. Unemployment is very high among Muslim male ‘youths’ - almost 40% of those under 25 are out of work and many of them get into trouble. That’s the part of the population of any country that commits most of the crimes and their being out of work doesn’t help. Are you beginning to get a picture of how the riots could happen?”
There were nods all around.
“Okay. What happens during the riots?” Lots of hands went up and I called on a girl.
“They’re burning up lots of cars,” she said, “setting them on fire.”
“How many?” I asked.
“More than fourteen hundred the other night.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of cars,” said a boy.
“But it’s getting better,” she said. “Not as many cars were burned last night.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Six hundred sixty.”
“That’s a lot!” said another boy.
“Okay,” I said. “Third question: Why are the riots occurring?”
There was a pause before another girl said, “Because they feel discrimination in France and they’re angry.”
“Okay. Any other answers?”
“Because they don’t have jobs,” said a boy. “A lot of them have nothing else to do.”
“All right. Now for the last question: What is the French government doing about the riots?”
“They’re putting more police out there to deal with the rioters,” one said.
“They’re starting curfews,” said another.
“What are curfews?” I asked.
“When people must be inside at night.”
“Is it a sundown to sunrise curfew?” I asked.
“Ten PM to dawn,” she said.
“What happens if they go out?” asked a boy.
“They go to jail for two months and get fined $6000,” she answered.
“Wow. That’s a lot.”
“Do you think those moves will be effective?” I asked.
“There were only 660 cars burned the first night of the curfews,” said the girl.
“Only?” said the boy.
On the blackboard, I wrote four questions under the heading “Riots in France.” The first asked, “Who is rioting?” The others asked, “What happens during the riots?”; “Why are the riots occurring?” and “What is the French government doing about them?” Students were instructed to copy the questions on a piece of paper, leaving space under each for answers. They they were to use search engines on their laptops to find information. The riots had, at that point, been occurring for two weeks.
“How should we answer the first question, Mr. McLaughlin?” a girl asked.
“Use your brain,” I said. “Don’t use mine. It’s a simple question: ‘Who is rioting?’ Find an answer.”
She didn’t like my response, but I didn’t want to influence her search. I knew the answer was being reported in different ways and that’s what I wanted students to find out.
Pretty soon, several started raising their hands. When I called on a boy, he started reading from the screen of his laptop: French youths rioted for the thirteenth night . . .”
“Hold on,” I said. “I’d prefer that you each write the answers on your paper before we go over them as a group. I want you to process the information through your brains rather than reading it from the screen.” When most were done researching, I said, “Okay. Who is rioting?”
The boy had his hand up again. “Youths,” he said.
“Youths,” I repeated. “Who else found that?”
Several hands went up.
“Any other answers to ‘Who is rioting?’ ” I asked.
“Immigrant youths,” said a girl.
“Immigrant youths,” I repeated. “Any other answers?”
“Muslim immigrant youths or the children of Muslim Arab and African immigrants,” said another girl.
I went over to a world map and called for everyone’s attention. “Here is France,” I said, “and here is North Africa across the Mediterranean. During the 1800s, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia became French colonies. After World War II there was a rebellion in Algeria and it became independent in 1962. After that, France’s population didn’t go up much as people used birth control more and abortion became available. Immigration from the former colonies was encouraged and now Muslim African and Arab immigrants, and their descendents, comprise about 12% of France’s 60 million people. However, they’re not assimilating well. That means they’re not joining French culture as fully as France would like. They live in France, but stay to themselves keep their own ways. Unemployment is very high among Muslim male ‘youths’ - almost 40% of those under 25 are out of work and many of them get into trouble. That’s the part of the population of any country that commits most of the crimes and their being out of work doesn’t help. Are you beginning to get a picture of how the riots could happen?”
There were nods all around.
“Okay. What happens during the riots?” Lots of hands went up and I called on a girl.
“They’re burning up lots of cars,” she said, “setting them on fire.”
“How many?” I asked.
“More than fourteen hundred the other night.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of cars,” said a boy.
“But it’s getting better,” she said. “Not as many cars were burned last night.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Six hundred sixty.”
“That’s a lot!” said another boy.
“Okay,” I said. “Third question: Why are the riots occurring?”
There was a pause before another girl said, “Because they feel discrimination in France and they’re angry.”
“Okay. Any other answers?”
“Because they don’t have jobs,” said a boy. “A lot of them have nothing else to do.”
“All right. Now for the last question: What is the French government doing about the riots?”
“They’re putting more police out there to deal with the rioters,” one said.
“They’re starting curfews,” said another.
“What are curfews?” I asked.
“When people must be inside at night.”
“Is it a sundown to sunrise curfew?” I asked.
“Ten PM to dawn,” she said.
“What happens if they go out?” asked a boy.
“They go to jail for two months and get fined $6000,” she answered.
“Wow. That’s a lot.”
“Do you think those moves will be effective?” I asked.
“There were only 660 cars burned the first night of the curfews,” said the girl.
“Only?” said the boy.
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