The Harmony of Discord

Today is the 75th Anniversary of the Nazi regime in Germany. Damn. Now that I’m a little older, seventy five isn’t that big a number. That’s not very long ago.

Today we’re trying to decide if a black man or a woman should be the next American President. For all George Bush has been compared to a Nazi, he isn’t one. He won’t be in power next year this time – he’ll be gone. A new President will be in place. A peaceful transition from an intransigent, ideological, new-age conservative to a new President.

Say what you will about George Bush, he ain’t a Nazi. He led with fear up his sleeve, but he will be turned out of office peacefully, quietly, and even gracefully.

America is a good place to live.

NYT came out in favor of Hillary. Oh well, what the hell. I guess I don’t know much. I think I’ll go ice fishing this weekend instead of worry about it.

Most teachers have met that kid in class who comes on strong. The kid has a presence, a voice, a way of talking, that captures the attention of the room.

This can be very bad. If the kid takes over the class, the teacher is in trouble. The class would rather listen to the kid than the teacher. Things can go awry in a classroom pretty quickly when this happens.

If the teacher is skilled in her craft and knows how to cast the right spell, she will cast a spell on that kid in class. She will shake a little fairy dust out of her red pen and find a way to include the natural little leader into the social fabric of the classroom. She might talk to the kids parents even about finding ways to redirect Johny’s attention and energy. She will give him a voice in things, respect his opinion, and help him learn how to work in the group. She won’t let him take over the class.

It’s one of the things the Boomers are saying to the Bloomers under all the messaging. They are pulling the teacher trick on the Bloomers, on Barak. Barak is taking over the class. What is there to do?

It’s now up to Barak to show what kind of metaphor maker he is. He has to cast a spell to block the old teacher spell that Mrs. Clinton and the Boomers have cast.

The Bloomers are here.

The Clintons are my generation, and we are the old people. Edwards is younger, but he is at the tail end of the boomers. Obama is not speaking to the boomers. He is speaking to the Bloomers. The Bloomers have arrived, and Obama is their leader.

Note to Boomers: Notice how our children have grown to become responsible adults, or most certainly should have by now. Our successful children now appear gainfully employed, with spouses and children of their own. They buy houses and worry about medical bills and juggling their time and money, as the live in a world where the internet is ubiquitous, and cell phones are a necessary fact.  Microsoft Word no longer tries to capitalize Internet.

And here comes Barak Obama. He is not in my generation of Boomers. He is the top of the new generation, and he is one of their leaders. He is speaking directly to them, the Bloomers, not to me; although he certainly appreciates my support and he is very aware that we, the old guys, are watching his every move.

He knows he’s got us. We hear his words, and we can register his core message, although we can’t resist chiding him for a few things that confuse and disturb us. We welcome his youth and hope and optimism.  But, he is speaking to the young, not to us.  He’s got the Clinton-Edwards crowd, if only he could get Clinton and Edwards out of the way.

He needs the young to make this happen for him, and he is one of their leaders.

This election will not be decided on race or gender. It will be decided by generation.

Here’s my prediction. Obama will continue to speak to the Bloomers, while making yes and playing footsie with the old guys. The youth will hear him. They will vote in unprecedented numbers. He will win the nomination after Edwards and Clinton, falling back fast, remove themselves and support him. The Republicans have no youthful choice – they are all grandpas and grandmas.

This is the year the boomers become the old guys.

Here’s to youth!

Here’s to President Obama.

Today on our way to an event, we noticed a retirement home, as they are called, with the charming name “The Arms of the Redeemer.” Now maybe you find that comforting, if you are a Christian. You could be looking for just such a place to die, or you might be looking for a place for one of your beloved parents or grandparents to spend the last days.

What if you are not a Christian? What if you are one of those poor souls who many Christians believe are going to hell? Maybe you are a Muslim or a Jew, maybe you are some other horrible pagan religion, or maybe you are an atheist. Perhaps you are just an addle-brained agnostic, too afraid to make the Occam razor-sharp choice between believing and not-believing.

But we were lucky, as we read through the Sunday paper this morning. We saw another advertisement in the business section, especially for non-Christians. Now, you can sign up for The Gates of Hell Retirement Home, opening soon in a trailer court near you!

Gates of Hell offers end of life care for the elderly, the infirm, and any other humans who find themselves doomed to die without the correct faith-papers to enter the Arms of the Redeemer.

Gates of Hell offers an evening bar with unlimited drinks, a casino for you to gamble away your life savings, and several available pleasurable experiences, including non-traditional services from our specially trained nurses, available at no additional cost. Gates of Hell also offers free lodging and meals for your family, as long as they post a certain level of betting per day in our casino.

Gates of Hell offers a complete line of incineration services after you pass away, including an option to have your ashes interred in our exclusive Oven of Eternal Burn.

Welcome to the Gates of Hell Retirement Home!

I was a teacher in several classrooms and on nearly every level a person can be a teacher, and during most days of all twenty years in all my classrooms, I spoke with several students individually and, yes, I will admit it, I touched at least a student a day. Nowadays, when someone says “touched” a student, we assume a sexual connotation. I never intended a sexual connotation or anything remotely like that. The kindly touch would come as a hand on the shoulder, a pat on the back, and sometimes a hug.

Times have changed. In the Age of Accountability, thinly veiled anti-public education groups, reinforced by federal laws like No Child Left Behind, supported by the doomsday scenarios of the anti-tax groups, and invigorated by politically motivated voucher programs, attack public schools from all quarters. Public schools are portrayed as monsters somehow consuming our precious children and have somehow become dangerous places where lives are wasted or torn apart by terrible forces.

In this context especially, the denizens of these these dark places, the teachers, cannot touch students without risk of being misinterpreted and subjected to student complaints (yes, they do it to get back at a teacher who they think is creepy), or be accosted by crazed parents who take a child’s comments completely out of context.

Earlier this year, there was a series of articles that came out over AP about all the perverts who were lurking in schools, waiting to take advantage of the trusting children and their families. And every time a teacher does commit a sex crime against a student, the criminal is always reported as a teacher, as though being a teacher somehow defines the criminal. These vicious stories seek to tack all teachers with the label of sex predator, and call into question the whole public school enterprise as though sex predators were rampant in schools. In one particularly onerous series of articles, the problem is compared to and declared “worse” than the sex scandal in the Catholic Church, as though the sex scandal had already defined the Catholic Church, and every priest is a suspected child molester.

Very few sex criminals are teachers, or priests, for that matter. Teachers are caring, loving people, who have chosen to give their professional lives to help children learn. Teachers choose to do this even though they understand the stress they will be under, the criticism they will receive, and the complaints they know are coming. They choose to enter and remain in the profession in spite of knowing how they will struggle financially. Teachers choose to be teachers because they wish to serve, to change lives for the better, to nurture children.

There are a few teachers who get into trouble, and there are a few who should not be teachers. Those few teachers who do commit crimes against children should be (and are) prosecuted, removed from the profession, and punished, but their crimes are not the fault of the public school system. No one in public schools, least of all teachers, protects sex criminals. The safest place for a child to be is at school under the care of a loving, certified, professional teacher. And yes, school is a great place to get a pat on the back, a touch on the shoulder, and maybe even a hug.

I hope that never changes.

For the first time in many years, we are having a normal winter here in the mid-west-north. That makes it an unusual normal winter. We get snow every few days, the temperature ranges in the crisp zone between just above zero Fahrenheit to just below freezing. Red cheeks prevail and people shuffle quickly between their cars and houses, but the snowmobilers and skiers and fisherman are out without complaint.

A normal winter has become an oddity in this time of heightened concern about global warming. The issue won’t leave us, but instead will become part of our lives. We have affected the climate: that’s a fact. No longer something to fear, or at least a fear we have grown used to. Instead it will be an economic event coupled with a series of “natural” disasters such as Katrina, droughts, and flooding. Global warming has already become a political football – not longer an issue of science, but an issue of political advantage.

We can’t call it Christmas, or we are told we are offending someone from a religion that celebrates something other than Christmas. Indeed, Christmas may be anathema to some people’s religion. We can’t call it “the Holidays,” since the Christians view this as a denigration of Christmas, possibly even a capital offense. It’s similar to naming a stuffed bear Mohammad, this calling Christmas a Holiday. We ought to take the guy out and crucify him or something.

Therefore, I suggest a new name. With all due respect, we should call it Chrustmas. Chrustmas calls up smells of baking bread, slightly tense but enjoyable family times, and crunching through the snow. No one has to be offended in any religion.

May all your Chrustmasses be merry.

They seem to be on the run, but don’t look for things to get better for a while. With 9/10ths of the human beings on the planet living in something close to abject poverty or worse, it isn’t clear that the people like us, who have access to the internet, wealth enough to buy coffee at Starbucks, and mostly drive cars, are really going to catch on to how high the stakes really are.

But what the hell. Al Gore is admitting that America is wrong on global warming. China is the great hope in leaping from coal to renewable in their search for latte, Bush looks fairly irrelevant, and the horrid reincarnation of NCLB is languishing, awaiting impetus from the new President. Unfortunately, the slate of candiates on both sides seem to be doing more to obfuscate that clarify, and the establishment is waiting patiently for the field to sort itself out. Everything seems to be in the balance, as indeed it always is. We just know it this time.