Lift Up Your Hearts!

I don’t remember exactly when I started feeling uncomfortable about Hallowe’en; I think it was when adults wrenched the holiday away from the children.

As a child I loved Hallowe'en.  Costumes were by and large homemade:  by parents for the youngest, then by parents and children working together, then by the children themselves.  Our elementary school had a costume parade for parents and neighbors, with judging and prizes.  Creativity was high.  I was by no means the most inventive, but some of the costumes I remember making were a cuckoo clock, a salt shaker (my friend from across the street was the pepper), a parking meter, and a knight—complete with a wooden sword my father and I made together, and which was a favorite plaything for many years thereafter.  The hours of creative activity and of parent and child working together were priceless.

Enter Corporate America, ready and willing to “help” busy parents by reducing the Hallowe’en costume adventure to a credit card purchase, robbing children in one stroke of parental bonding, learning opportunities, and the creative impulse.  Add a risk-averse and lawsuit-prone culture, producing Hallowe’en safety tip gems like this one from our local paper:  Be certain that all parts of costumes are flame-retardant, including wigs, beards and capes. Since homemade costumes tend to be made of highly flammable materials—cardboard, paper, paint, cloth—parents now face a new Hallowe’en fear:  that they are risking their children’s lives by allowing them to create their own costumes.

Trick-or-treating was a big deal, because candy and other sweets were much rarer in those days than now.  It was a family affair, with young children travelling with older siblings or being escorted by parents who enjoyed the opportunity to talk with the neighbors.  There was plenty of commercial candy, sure, but also cookies, candy apples, and other homemade treats. 

Enter a cruel hoax that would forever change the face of Hallowe’en:  the thought that our apparently kindly neighbors were secretly hiding razor blades in apples and poisoning the candy.  Fear ran rampant; hospitals volunteered to x-ray the children’s goodie bags; all candy was subject to parental inspection before a bite could be eaten.  (Note:  this is not the same as candy being subject to parental sampling, which has always been the case.)  Years after this paranoia was proven to be based on an urban legend, newspapers continue to print dire warnings:  Don't eat candy until it has been inspected at home, and Don't accept – or eat – any treat that isn't commercially wrapped.

In fact, the whole trick-or-treating adventure, with flashlights in the dark, scary shadows, and the occasional squeal turned into a tame business overrun by rules, such as Set a definite route and timetable for trick-or-treating; Try to complete the route before dark; Make certain that costumes fit well to prevent children from tripping; Wear makeup and hats rather than masks, and check to be sure the makeup uses FDA-approved colorings; Costumes should be appropriate for the weather so that trick-or-treaters stay dry and comfortable; and Trick-or-treat bags should hang from children's shoulders so that hands are free.  Are the kids visiting the neighbors or climbing Mt. Everest?

Thus the stage was set for a complete takeover of the holiday.  How could such a potential money-maker be left in the hands of children?  First adults began organizing and scripting parties for children, and then for themselves.  As Hallowe’en became more adult-oriented, a G-rated holiday became R, or worse, with costumes becoming violent and raunchy.

It’s no wonder that some well-meaning churches gave up on the traditional Hallowe’en, and started organizing their own events.  However, I think many of them unintentionally contributed to the problem, some going so far as to ban as Satanic what was once a legitimate church festival, the eve of All Saints Day.  Here’s an excellent article on why this is a mistake, by James B. Jordan, whose name I recognized from our days in a very conservative Presbyterian denomination.  [H/T Peter V.]

I’ll admit that for years I expressed the desire to forget about Hallowe’en altogether.  All the commercial hoopla of Hallowe’en and Christmas squeezes out Thanksgiving, which I consider an important and sadly neglected holiday.  Then I realized that the fact that Thanksgiving still retains the elements of giving thanks, innocence, and family togetherness is due largely to the fact that the commercial interests have not yet figured out how to exploit it.

So instead I say, let’s give Hallowe’en back to the children.  Refuse to buy commercial costumes.  Help your children if they need guidance, but don’t take over the project.  Help them carve a pumpkin and put a real candle inside, then roast the seeds for a delicious snack.   Let them help you bake pumpkin cookies and pumpkin bread.  Drink apple cider and splurge on some doughnut holes to go with it.  Spend less money; have more fun.

Trick-or-treat in your own neighborhood.  If it makes you nervous to let your older children go out on their own, make a resolution to get to know your neighbors better in the next year.

Don’t have kids of your own?  Take a courageous stand:  skip the adult parties with too much drinking and too little sense.  Stay home and answer the door with a smile, a friendly word, and some commercial, FDA approved, wrapped candy.  (We can only liberate ourselves, not the entire world.)

Stella Sung: The Phoenix Rising
Chausson: Poème
Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Stravinsky: The Firebird

This concert was pure pleasure.  Five gorgeous works, two new and three old favorites.  Plus I found a new and much easier way home. 

This passage from David Allen's Ready for Anything blew me away, and deserves its own post.

We recently raised some prices—because I didn’t want business to go away.  Let me explain.  One day, I recognized a subtle internal danger signal:  There was the tiniest bit of an “uh-oh” feeling inside me each time we were asked to do more and more of a certain kind of work for a favorite client.  It was almost imperceptible, but it was there:  I didn’t want the phone to ring.  After many years of watching this dynamic, I knew that if I allowed those feelings to persist, indeed, the phone would stop ringing.  This client would go away.

I confronted the feeling and discovered the root of the problem:  We were underpriced for the amount of time and attention we had to commit to do our standard quality work.  I had to challenge myself with this question:  “What do I need to do to make me positively excited about the phone’s ringing again?”  The answer was simple:  Raise the price.  Then I could feel good about dedicating the time and energy we do to this client—and the more time, the merrier.

When your front line feels overwhelmed, watch out for resistance to new … opportunities!  When a ringing phone creates stress at the spinal level, though the words may be “Can I help you?” the underlying communication is, “Go away!  I can’t handle you!”

I'm certain there is application here far beyond the business model, and that many families, friendships, projects, and resolutions are suffering because we fail to heed that internal danger signal and then do the often difficult work of figuring out how to arrange that we embrace, rather than avoid or resent, a situation.

When Porter goes out of town on business, his company pays a small amount to cover the cost of getting to and from the airport.  If we drive, I get most of that allowance to spend however I please, completely off-budget.  Why should that matter?  Our budget already contains a “hobby” category for each of us that serves the same purpose, and I could always make a strong case for fitting most of my expenditures into the regular budget anyway.  So why is my “taxi fund” so important to me?

Because Porter flies on a lot of airplanes, and the airport is 45 minutes away from home.  Usually he leaves really early in the morning and returns late at night.  What the taxi fund does is completely quell my inner reluctance to arise at a ridiculous hour—or worse, stay up late—and make the long drive.  Granted, I should be happy to do this just because it makes life easier for him and he really appreciates it, but I’m a sinful human being, and this really, really helps.  I enjoy the extra effort because I have so much fun with my taxi fund.

I once read, for an education course, a book by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe called Analyzing Performance Problems:  Or, You Really Oughta Wanna.  I don’t remember anything else that the book covered, but the idea that “you really oughta wanna” is a poor motivator has stayed with me for more than 35 years.  That is so true.  Actually, I find it more of a de-motivator.

There are many areas of life in which a seemingly small change could make a huge difference in attitude.  The Daleys’ new bedtime cleanup ritual is another example.  It was a minor change with very low cost that made a disproportionate, and delightful, difference in their lives.

We have a jelly jar to fill up with colorful glass gems….  Each evening at clean up time, we set a timer for fifteen minutes.  For every minute left on the timer … [the children] get to put a bead in the jar.  A bonus of five beads is awarded if the whole house is clean before we even start the timer (motivating clean up before the evening even arrives!).  A penalty of three beads is subtracted if the parental inspection reveals that the house is not clean despite the boys' statement that it is.

The reward for a full jar of beads is a special treat selected by the boys.  The most recent one was to watch a VeggieTales movie.

This works so well for our family.  Now, even if it takes the whole fifteen minutes and they get no beads, the job is done in that short time—in the past sometimes it would take until they were falling into bed and still not be done, really.  The past several days they have gotten most of their beads and even the bonus twice!  The jar is now half full again though it was reset only a few days ago!  The house is noticeably cleaner (ask my Mom who just visited!).  I know I'm using a lot of exclamation points, but I am so happy that this is working out.  Everyone benefits and it is turning out to be really fun.

Both of these examples involve money, or a form of money.  There’s a reason money was invented:  it’s quantifiable and convenient.  In many situations, however, overcoming our gut-level reluctance is not so simple.  We will need to think creatively and differently to find the key.  The most vital step, however, is recognizing our inner qualms and the importance—and efficacy—of adjusting the parameters.

Any ideas?

From a BBC News story of the latest Nissan recall (H/T Porter):

Nissan said there had been no accidents reported due to the fault, which can cause the engine to stall while running.

Just what I needed, something more to worry about.  The nighmare scenario had never occurred to me:  We're peacefully asleep in our beds, our car resting in the garage, apparently quite comfortable—but unbeknownst to us suffering an episode of stalling while the engine was not running.

Ready for Anything:  52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, by David Allen (Viking Penguin, 2003)

Having been so impressed by the ideas, if not the writing, of Allen's Getting Things Done, I was eager to read more.  His latest book, Making It All Work, isn't yet available at our library, so I grabbed Ready for Anything.

As I began reading, I thought this would be a short review because there wasn't much new, that the book would be valuable as inspiration (very important!) but wouldn't add much to what I'm already working on.  Now that I've finished, however, I know that this will be a short review because there is too much here, that there is much benefit I could reap by buying the book and taking time to work through the ideas and exercises.  I'm not ready, as I'm still in the early stages of implementing the Getting Things Done ideas, but it will be a worthwhile later step.

Allen's New Age spiritual inclinations show more in Ready for Anything than in the previous book, but they're easy enough to ignore if you're alert to them, and don't detract significantly from his useful ideas.  As with anything, take what's good and true and helpful, and leave the rest.

These quotes don't begin to cover Allen's ideas, but they're a taste.  I have one more, but it merits its own post.

I just spent all morning pruning my large pine tree.  It felt great…  But it wasn’t on a list.  This morning it just seemed like the thing to do.

If I didn’t have the lists I have, and if I hadn’t done a thorough review of them within the last few days, I wouldn’t have been able to trust that my inventory of “defined work” was complete and current this morning.  And that it could wait.  Without that conscious self-renegotiation process, there would be at least a slight gnawing sense of anxiety that there were shoulds lurking in the shadows that could attack me at any moment! And what’s the best (temporary) relief and (false) protection from the unseen and ugly shoulds?  Get busy.

Without my lists, I would probably still have pruned my pine tree this morning—but for all the wrong reasons.

[I]t’s easy to create fancy systems in concept, software, and seminars, [but] how will they work when you have the flu and feel awful?  Real systems must be solid enough to hold up in the toughest reality—when we least feel like maintaining them.

Rules tend to show up because principles are not clear or trusted.  When you know that people have bought into standards, you can give them freedom for decisions and behaviors.  If this alignment doesn’t exist, you must micromanage with regulations, expending much more energy in the long run.

I contend that a competitive edge, personal and organizational, is maintained by one’s ability to deal with surprise.  It’s when the pressures of unexpected change challenge the systems and behaviors that excellence is really demonstrated.

Uh oh.  I’m in deep trouble.

Your power is proportional to your ability to relax….  Find out what’s stressing you, and deal with it—now—if you want to be truly effective on all levels at once.  Being relaxed and capable of focusing on what’s at hand, when it’s at hand, without over- or underreacting, is a master skill.

Ahem.  New Year’s Resolution #3.

What do you not have time to do—something that might feel like a waste of time—but you know that it’s time to do?  Walk in the garden?  Have dinner with a friend?  Take your team off site just to hang out together?  Play laser guns with your kids?  Walk away from the canvas, until you can’t help taking up the brush again?

Relax.  You have to put in the clutch to shift gears.  You have to let go to reengage at another, more high-leveraged ration.  When you least feel like slowing down my be the most critical time to do it.

The Sabbath was made for man…. (Mark 2:27)

Small things, done consistently, create major impact.  Real change occurs not with a flash in the pan but with steady engagement at some new level of interaction….  What’s tricky is that it takes an equally small amount of consistent negative behaviors to create significant unwanted consequences.  Habitual self-degrading self-talk, though seemingly minor in the moment, reinforces lowered self-esteem and performance overall.  Little stuff, unchecked, can create some of the worst problems.

Aim for success, not perfection.  Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.  Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism.  Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person. – Dr. David M. Burns.

I'm a day late, but this is for our children, who loved Branagh's Henry V from an early age; for our grandchildren, who I trust will do the same in their time; for my nephew, who can speak the speech from memory; and for all who have ever felt the strength of we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. (H/T Andy B.)

Non nobis domine!

Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture, by Adam S. McHugh (IVP Books, 2009)

This isn't actually a review—yet.  But this is clearly a book I need to read, so I've ordered it from the library despite my already intimidating "to read" list.

Adam McHugh was interviewed in the most recent Mars Hill Audio Journal, and I was hooked immediately.  (Something like this happens every time I think about letting my Mars Hill subscription lapse.)

McHugh tells the story of one little girl who was astonished when mother commented that she was being awfully quiet—because it was anything but quiet in her own mind.

Introverts have constant activity going on in their heads; neurological studies have shown that the brains of introverts actually show more blood flow, more activity, than the brains of extroverts; this, it is speculated, is why they need less external stimulation.  IN fact, they need solitude in order to be able to deal with all that neurological action, and if they don't get it, their brain chemistry becomes imbalanced.

So.  Li'l Writer Guy is not my own invention, but the normal manifestation of an introverted brain.

Another reason I was intrigued by this particular book was the author's view that the Church marginalizes introverts, making them feel unwanted, ungifted, and inferior—and in the process missing out on the particular gifts introverts have to bring to the Body of Christ.  The reason, McHugh explains, is that most American churches, like our society in general, are run by extroverts and promote a culture of extroversion.  I suspect I'll agree with him when I read the book, but I'm almost certain my son-in-law, the extrovert, will strongly disagree.  Perhaps it is the endpoints that are marginalized, and feel that society is bent towards the other extreme—the way my liberal friends see a strong conservative bias to the news media, when it is so obviously the other way around.  :)

McHugh has a website, Introverted Church, which I've only begun to investigate.  I think it's going to be fun, and maybe helpful.  I've already found a number of Yes! moments, such as this comment in a discussion about introverts in communal cultures.

[L]iving in West and Central Africa as an introvert was very hard. My housemate (also an introvert) and I basically took turns dealing with the streams of people. Having a housemate also took care of some other introvert pitfalls, like the fact that it was considered horrible that someone should be alone while they were sick. The cultural norm was that your friends should come sit by your bedside. Our African friends assumed that my housemate was doing that for me, when what she was *really* doing was letting me have alone time.

While it's nice to have someone around to help out when one is sick, having someone constantly by my bedside would definitely impede my recovery.

Have any of you read McHugh's book?  What are your thoughts?

This fits well with New Year's Resolution #10.

Nice music, too.  (H/T Jon.)

New Year’s Resolution #8 was “Enjoy Spontaneity.”  This is far from my natural inclination; I like plenty of warning, and generally agree with the old Holiday Inn commercial that “the best surprise is no surprise.”

Actually, that’s not completely true.  Surprises can be nice.  But my idea of a great “surprise getaway,” for example, runs along these lines:  “Hey, honey!  I have a great idea for a weekend adventure and I want it to be a surprise for you.  Is your schedule clear for three weeks from now?  You would need to pack clothing both for hiking and for eating in moderately nice restaurants, and also a warm jacket.”  That gets me a mystery adventure where someone else has done all the planning, and yet I can plan for it.

Fun, but hardly a model of spontaneity.  So you will see that our trip to Miami last week was really quite spontaneous, for me.

I did have a little warning:  We had known for a few weeks that Porter would have business at the Thai Consulate in Coral Gables, and—noting that the consulate is not far from the Miami Library—I had spent a little time planning some genealogical research.  But the paperwork moved so slowly we had long since given up the idea of combining business with pleasure this month.

Then, suddenly, Porter got the green light Wednesday evening, and we had to go the next day because of the consulate’s working hours.  There were hotel and rental car reservations to be made, sight-seeing to be planned, maps to be printed, paperwork to gather, research to be organized, and packing to do.  GTD really helped, as I was able to know what of Thursday and Friday’s work needed to be done before we left, and what could wait till our return.

We left early Thursday afternoon, arriving at our hotel in time to enjoy a walk on the beach before sunset.  The only thing I knew about the famous South Beach was that it had a diet named after it, so I'll admit I was shocked to find that our "beachfront" hotel was in the middle of the city and had no parking whatsoever.  I’m not used to valet parking and was rather nervous about turning the keys to our brand-new rental car (we started the trip with 46 miles on the odometer!) over to some stranger.  But it worked out all right.

The Doubletree Surfcomber turned out to be a fine hotel, and we had only to leave the grounds and cross a lovely pedestrian/bike path to get to the beach.  Once there, I received my second surprise:  I was expecting wall-to-wall sunbathers, hawkers, and a littered beach.  Perhaps that is true in the middle of the day, but in the early evening there were but a handful of swimmers, a couple of families on the beach, and some soccer players.  What’s more, it looked as if the whole beach had recently been swept of its trash—only the litter caught amongst the kelp revealed that the cleanliness was not natural.  The water, too, held some surprises:  unlike the ocean further north, the color of the water was that lovely, clear turquoise we've seen in the Keys—and despite the name of the hotel there was no surf at all!

As the sun set, we headed inland, crossing Lummus Park and walking down Ocean Drive in search of a place to eat.  There were certainly enough restaurants to choose from, but it was impossible to make a reasoned, intelligent decision.  Anyone who has experienced end of the Mexican ride at EPCOT can imagine what the walk was like:  impossible to walk 10 feet without having someone hawking at you, offering you coupons, regaling you with descriptions of their food, leading you to a seat.  Most restaurants had outdoor menu displays, which would have been convenient if we could have been left alone to peruse them, but no, there was always a smiling server who would not let the menu speak for itself.

More out of desperation than free choice, we settled on a seafood restaurant associated with one of the hotels, and it turned out to be pretty good.  Not exceptional, but good enough.  One of our friends likes the outdoor tables on Ocean Drive, saying it’s a great spot for people-watching.  Me, I don’t see the thrill in that, but it was nicer to be outside than in.

We returned to the hotel via the above-mentioned pedestrian/bike path, and Porter tried out the huge outdoor pool while I reclined in a deck chair and read.

The next day was full from beginning to end.  The consulate didn’t open till after noon, so after a leisurely breakfast we spent the morning at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.  This is our own little Leu Gardens writ large, and we barely had time for a tram tour of the grounds.  But our Leu membership gets us into Fairchild on a reciprocal basis, so we didn’t mind the short shrift, and will gladly return for more another time.

At this point we split up, Porter dropping me at the library while he went on to the consulate.  It took him several hours to complete his business, so I was able to get quite a bit of research done.  An observation:  At the New York Public Library I found the clientele to be primarily researchers, with an occasional (apparently) homeless person thrown in for variety. In Miami, the proportions were reversed.

Aside from a huge stop-and-stop traffic jam leaving Miami, and high-speed, bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Turnpike from Miami all the way to the Disney World exit, the trip home was fine.  It was good to be home, but I’m amazed at how much I was able to enjoy this almost-spontaneous adventure.

MMG is one of my Facebook friends. I've known her since before she was born, so technically she's more the daughter of our friends than my own friend.  Yet thanks to Facebook, in recent years I've had more contact with her, and know more about what's going on in her life, than with her parents.

This is a particular blessing, not only because it keeps up a connection that would otherwise have been lost, but because I enjoy her perspective on life.  She and I differ and disagree in multitudinous ways, from thoughts about God to the importance of televised hockey games.  As Hercule Poirot is fond of saying, she "gives one furiously to think."  But best of all, she is adept at finding (and posting) links from all over the Web, some of which lead me down very interesting paths.  Here's a recent one:

A cool presentation of part of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

And here's one more by Robinson, a second TED lecture that also overlaps a bit with the above .  With all Robinson has been saying about education, this is the first time I've heard him mention homeschooling (very near the end of the lecture).  He's neither positive nor negative, but acknowledges it as a legitimate form, which is progress, anyway.  (This one is only about 18 minutes long.)

I've written about Robinson before, notably in:  Sir Ken Robinson, Creativity, and Education, and also a review of his book, The Element.  And of course I can't miss the opportunity once again to plug John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education, which confirms and elaborates on what Robinson says about the industrial model of education.

Here are a few side notes I've taken from the above talks.

• There are no school systems anywhere that Robinson knows of that teaches dance every day, giving it as much importance as mathematics—which he believes to be a mistake.  Long ago I concluded that music should be given that same importance; that learning music should be no more optional than learning to read or to brush one's teeth.  But I apologize to our dancing daughter for not recognizing the similar importance of dance.  Sigh—if only the value of dance had been separated from silly little girls in frilly tutus, I might have been more understanding.
• "We still educate children by batches.  We put them through the system by age group.  Why do we do that?  Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are?  It's like the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture."  Amen and amen.
• Since 1970 in America, spending on education has more than doubled in terms of real money, class size has steadily declined, but literacy has remained the same.  Robinson believes this supports his thesis that the education system cannot be reformed but requires revolutionary change.  John Taylor Gatto and John Holt gave much of their lives to reforming the schools, and in the end concluded it couldn't be done, instead throwing their support and work into alternatives.  Robinson still has hope that the revolution can occur within the public educational system.
• The paradigm shift Robinson recommends is that we discard the industrial model on which our current view of education is based, and instead adopt an agricultural model.  I believe he's right, but with all the diversions he took in his longer talk, I wish he had pointed out that many would claim our schools are indeed based on an agricultural model:  that of agri-business and the CAFO.  The agricultural model we need for education is that of Polyface Farms, in which the "pigness of the pig"—the individuality of the student—is respected.
• Robinson has many important things to say about schools.  But for all that I agree with him, he is working from a view of humans—of life, the universe, and everything—so fundamentally different from my own that it's a wonder we have so much in common when it comes to education.  He comes to his conclusions based on his belief that human beings are insignificant in relation to the cosmos, that people are basically good but wrong circumstances cause us to go bad, and that we have risen from a lower state and continue to improve.  My own conclusions come from the Christian belief that human beings are of infinite value (importance being unrelated to size), that we have within us the potential to be far better than we can imagine, but that the evil streak within us is innate and cannot be eliminated by improving our circumstances.  And yet those fundamental differences lead us to many of the same conclusions!  Maybe we're right. 

It has not been a good couple of months for my relationship with spiders.

I grew up on Be Nice to Spiders, the delightful story of how cleaning up all the spiderwebs at the zoo made the animals miserable because the flies multiplied out of control.  We read it to our children, too, which is why Heather hesitated to take action when the spiders multiplied out of control at her house.  That was my job when I visited in September; heartless Grandma, oblivious to Jonathan's plea, "If there are any wolf spiders, don't kill them!"  I'm afraid I didn't take the time to ask for identification as I tackled the basement infestation.  We left plenty to take care of the flies, and I'm pretty sure none of them were wolf spiders.

Of this one I'm not so certain. (Click on the image for an up-close-and-personal view.)

I hope it's not a wolf spider, but I'm afraid neither Porter nor I managed to get a good look at its eyes.  We like spiders, we respect spiders, we're grateful to spiders ... but at 5 a.m., in the shower, without one's glasses on ... when one sees something this size scuttling about at one's feet ... some more primitive instinct gets in the way of both scientific curiosity and the desire to be kind to animals.

I'm just glad it was Porter who was in the shower, not me.  My own Close Encounter involved a palmetto bug (giant cockroach) and a bra, and I wasn't thinking about being nice to bugs, no I wasn't.

No, I'm not really leaving Facebook.  It's too useful a tool for keeping in touch with people I would otherwise be prone to neglecting.  I think it best to keep my participation minimal, however.

I've never done apps, for example, because I mostly find them annoying.  Today's Wall Street Journal provides another good reason to avoid them, a massive security breach.

That revelation was enough of a push to make me rescind my previous decision to share my blog posts as notes on Facebook.  Not that the recent breach had anything to do with notes; it merely makes me less comfortable with the platform and less willing to take whatever risks there might be when I've seen no discernable benefit.  Having my posts duplicated on Facebook does make them more accessible to some people, but (1) Facebook usually posts them in clumps, so that most are hidden under a "see more posts" link; (2) there are few comments made, so if people are reading them I rarely know about it; and (3) I prefer to have all comments here, anyway, to keep the conversations in one place.

So, I apologize to the few of you who I know do read my posts on Facebook, but after this one posts I'll be stopping the feed.  Please come here instead; you are more than welcome.

I'm awed, amazed, thrilled, and grateful for the successful rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners.  I really am.  But there's a disquieting thought that keeps intruding on my celebration.  It seems curmudgeonly, at best, to point out that for most of their ordeal the miners have had contact with the surface, food, water, tobacco, medical advice, a very expensive and intense rescue effort, and the good will of the entire world.  I admire the men no end for managing to work together and survive such a horrendous experience.

But when I read over and over the concerns about the men's mental health, and how they will bear scars for life because of their ordeal, and of all the effort put forth to help them, including training in how to deal with the media (another tribulation!), I can't stop thinking of the men who for longer months endured captivity and torture during the Vietnam War.  Or the 444-day ordeal of the victims of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  Or [fill in any one of a number of terrifying imprisonments].  Where was the concern for them?  Where the effort to ease their return to society?  Where, even, the money pouring in for interview, book, and movie deals?

Maybe we've become more concerned and compassionate over the years.  Maybe we just like a good, dramatic story.  I wouldn't take anything away from the support given these miners—but wouldn't it be nice to see that solidarity, that love, that attention, and those financial resources poured out for the ones who suffer even now, all over the world, mostly in obscurity?

Non Campus Mentis:  World History According to College Students, compiled by Anders Henriksson (Workman Publishing, New York, 2001) (Later retitled Ignorance Is Blitz)

This compilation of major historical events was pieced together from the essays and exams of students at a variety of colleges in the United States and Canada.  If you know a reasonable amount of world history and geography, you will find it hysterical, at least till you get to the quiz in the back of the book.

It would be a good book to read aloud at a party, although you would miss some pretty funny misspellings.  Reading it aloud in the car, however, as we did, would be unwise:  If you think texting puts the driver at a disadvantage, you should see what happens when he's doubled over with hysterical laughter.

Here are some excerpts, in roughly historical order, for your enjoyment.

Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro.  This was a duelist religion.

The history of the Jewish people begins with Abraham, Issac, and their twelve children.  Judyism was the first monolithic religion.  It had one big God named "Yahoo."

Moses was told by Jesus Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the Sahaira Desert.  The Book of Exodus describes this trip and the amazing things that happened on it, including the Ten Commandments, various special effects, and the building of the Suez Canal.  Forty centuries later they arrived in Canada.  This was the promise land of milk and chocolate.

Pythagasaurus fathered the triangle.

Augustus (a.k.a.Octagenarian) founded the Roman Catholic Empire.

When they finally got to Italy, the Australian Goths were tired of plungering and needed to rest.  Italy was ruled by the Visible Goths, while France and Spain were ruled by the Invisible Goths.

During the Middle Ages everyone was middle aged. ... Power belonged to a patriarchy empowering all genders except the female.  Nuns, for example, were generally women.

In a Romanesque church the stone roof is held up by a system of peers.  The usual design was a long knave split by a crosshair.  Without the discovery of the flying buttock it would have been an impossible job to build the Gothic cathedral.

Finally, Europe caught the Black Death.  The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras.  It was spread from port to port by inflected rats.  ... Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. ... Death rates exceeded one hundred percent in some towns. ... The plague also helped the emergance of English as the national language of England, France, and Italy.

Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granola, a part of Spain now known as Mexico and the Gulf States.

Calvin was born a generation after Luther and is seen as one of Luther's greatest predecessors.  He accepted all Luther's ideas except that of birth.  Calvinists were the only ones who believeed in pre-detonation.  It is not surprising that their preaching consisted mainly of dogmatic explosions.

The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic.

Henvry VIII survived an assault from the Papal bull.

The Thirty Years War began with the Defecation of Prague. ... Prague was the capitol of Bulemia.

These good times ended when England suffered Civil War between the Musketeers and the Round Ones.  Oliver Cromwell solved this and other problems by removing prominent things from people who disagreed with him.

Next time you hear Porter shout, Queen of Hearts-like, "Off with their prominent things!" you will know why.

East of the back of the beyond were the Russians, who knew nothing at all during this period.  A factor in this was their use of the Kinetic alphabet. ... Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great.  Peter filled his cabinet with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. ... Catherine the Great rose to power only because her husband had been murdered by his clothiers for failure to incubate.

Americans, of course, wanted no involvement in the French and Indian War because they did not want to fight in India.  ...  The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor.  The Quebec Act was an Intolerable Act becaude it would have required Americans to learn French in School. ...  Benjamin Franklin, already famous as inventor of the light bulb, persuaded French King George III to help the USA.

Another problem was that France was full of French people.  Dickens made this point in The Tail of Two Sisters, which he required us to read.

An example of the importance of women during the industrial revolution was the work of Spinning Jenny, a young girl forced to work more than 40 hours a day.

Another man to influence the state and others was Karl Marx, who advanced his theory of dialectical maternalism. ... According to Marx the stages of history are canabalism, slavery, fuedalism, capitalism, and back to canabalism.  These are the moods of production.

Nearly everybody breathed a sigh of relief when the Communists were able to restore chaos.

When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 929 many people were left to political incineration.  Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extraterrestrialism. ... The New Deal was an idea inspired by President Franklin Eleanor Roosavelt.

Stalin, Rosevelt, Churchill, and Truman were known as the "Big Three."

John F. Kennedy worked closely with the Russians to solve the Canadian Missile Crisis.

Mohammed Gandi...was the last British ruler of India.

[T]he fall of empires has been a good thing, because it gives more people a chance to exploit their own people without outside interference.

The Civil Rights movement in the USA turned around the corner with Martin Luther Junior's famous "If I Had a Hammer" speech.

East and West made mends with each other. The Berlin Mall was removed. 

Can you believe I get tired of hearing that my blog is absolutly brilliant, and the commenter can't wait to share it with his friends?

Well, I do, and so I'm trying out comment moderation.  If I'm going to have to spend log in several times a day to remove spam, I might as well spend that time approving comments.

The down side is that if you write a comment here, you won't see it right away, at least not at first.  Jon has enhanced the moderation software to allow previously-approved commenters to bypass the moderation process, though you'll have to go through it again if you write from a different IP address.

I trust it will go smoothly, but if your comment gets lost, please let me know.

This resolution has been coming up on my agenda for months, only to be replaced by what seemed to be a more urgent or appropriate idea.  But now its time has come.

I love you.

What a powerful phrase—perhaps the most blessed concept in any tongue.  But what does it mean?  What do we mean when we say it?

• I want you.
• You're sexy.
• I like the way you make me feel.
• I want you to love me.
• I need you.
• I like the power I have over you.
• You make me happy.
• You're good to me.
• You're good for me.
• I want to live my life through your accomplishments. 
• I know what's best for you.

And so on.  How often is what we call our love for another person mixed up with our own needs and desires?  In my case, too often.  Why else would I worry so much about what others will think of what I do, say, or write?

Mind you, there's some good in that concern.  It's good to consider the consequences of one's actions.  But I think many of us spend far more time asking not what affect our actions have on others, nor what they think of our words and deeds, but what they think of us.

You can't run a business that way, you can't teach a class that way, you can't raise children that way—at least not with much success.  Maybe you can't live a life that way.  For certain you can't love that way.

I've caught myself up short, sometimes, thinking, "Who am I more concerned about in this interaction, the other person, or myself?"  This resolution is an effort to make that question second nature.

Progress Report

#1  Read More Books  September was a very good month, with nine books read.  Some were of more substance than others, but all were read for their own sake, not for swelling the list, so I'm happy about it.  The count stands at 44 books for the year, so I think I have a good chance of meeting my one-book-per-week goal (eight more), though going into the long holiday season, it would be a real stretch to meet the more ambitions five-per-month goal (16 more).

#2  Rediscover Feasting  About the same.

#3  Learn to Relax  Ditto.

#4  Like More Things  I'm beginning to understand why people like to run.  I've always liked walking, but to enjoy running is new.  I also realized this month that I actually enjoy drinking wine and can now answer the "What do you think of this wine?" question a little more intelligently than, "Eh, it's wine."  I don't think I"ll ever be enthusiastic about it—certainly not the way I am about chocolate—but as with soda, it is good to be able to enjoy it occasionally, rather than actively disliking it.

#5  Pay Attention  Status quo.

#6  Cast Away Fear  The same.

#7  Talk Less, Listen More  Several times in different conversations I made a consious decision to do this, which I regard as progress.

#8  Enjoy Spontaneity  Not much to report.  Perhaps a step backwards, as my GTD system is fraying around the edges and needs a tweak.  GTD is the best resource I've found yet for enabling me to enjoy spontaneity.

#9  End with the Beginning in Mind  I've made a point of starting a new book as soon as I finish one, which may help explain September's progress at #1, though to be honest that was probably more influenced by being sick for more than a week.  I've also discovered that having clearly defined, small, "next actions" are important here.  Having a big project all lined up to go in the morning can lead to neglecting other projects and a return of the nagging worries GTD is supposed to eliminate.  What I really need to do is discipline myself to make progress, however small, on all fronts worthy of being called active projects, then give extra attention to the one that is currently grabbing my attention.

Can it have been almost four years since Kelly James, Brian Hall and Nikko Cooke died in a blizzard on Mt. Hood?  I'm not usually one to follow closely television's relentless coverage of unfolding tragedy, but knowing Kelly's brother, Frank, made the events personal.

In the Shadow of Mt. Hood is an article written by Frank James in the September issue of Christianity Today.  (It's available online if you follow that link.)  I'm a bit reluctant to provide excerpts this time, as there is nothing he says that's not important.  (Those of you who know that I knew Frank when he was an elder in our PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) church, and know how I feel about most PCA sermons, will understand how significant it is for me to make such a statement.)  But here is a taste, anyway:

Grief is a relentless predator. Those who have lost loved ones tell me that one never completely escapes it. Strangely, a part of me does not want the grief to stop, because the grief itself is a connection to Kelly. Yet another part of me is so weary from carrying the burden of a broken heart.

In the midst of our family tragedy, I made a peculiar discovery. One would think that grief and disappointment with God would lead to bitterness against him. In my nightmare, I not only prayed intensely in private but also publicly declared my faith and confidence in God on CNN—but Kelly froze to death anyway.

There is disappointment, sadness, and confusion, but oddly, there is no retreat from God. Instead, I find myself drawn to God. To be sure, he is more enigmatic than I thought, but I still can't shake loose from him. There seems to be a kind of gravitational pull toward God.

"Harm reduction," a new term to me, though not a new concept, is a controversial approach to social problems, in which illegal, immoral, or otherwise harmful behaviors are attacked, not at the root, but at the branches:  distributing condoms to slow the spread of AIDS, needle exchange programs for drug addicts, and legalized prostitution, for example.  It is palliative care: attempting to ameliorate the symptoms of an apparently incurable social disorder.

Whether you approve of the idea or think it only exacerbates the problem—like Needle Park in Zurich, one of Switzerland's early experiments, which succeeded in reducing AIDS infections and drug-related deaths, but attracted addicts and professional drug dealers from all over Europe—the following story is heartwarming.  It brings to mind Mother Teresa, who, if she couldn't cure the ills of the lowest and the poorest in Calcutta, at least gave them the touch of a loving hand, and a clean, safe, comfortable place in which to die.

Meera Bai's story has a title shocking in itself:  Why I Help Addicts Shoot Up.  A nurse, she works at Vancouver's InSite:  "a safe, health-focused place where people inject drugs and connect to health care services – from primary care to treat disease and infection, to addiction counselling and treatment."

InSite has been shown to be a successful public health initiative in more than 30 scientific research reports published in peer-reviewed medical journals. Such reports demonstrate that InSite users are more likely to seek long-term addiction treatment and to stay off the street, than users who choose to inject outside. The HIV rates in [Vancouver's Downtown Eastside] are on par with many African nations. Such blood-borne diseases are spread by sharing needles—something that is banned at InSite. And instead of using puddle water from urine-soaked alleys, participants are provided with sterile water, which reduces various kinds of horrific infection.

Clean supplies, safe rooms, friendly staff supervision during injection and compassionate nursing care help injection drug users to learn how to value their bodies, and thus themselves, even as our society generally tells them they are worse than useless. The choice to stop using drugs is a decision that many addicts cannot even imagine making, but InSite provides reachable steps toward a healthier life, offering participants a chance at redemption of both body and soul.

It's where I choose to work as a nurse—and as a Christian. Trying to follow the command of God to seek out and care for those in need of mercy has led me to find grace and pass it on among these people in the streets of the Downtown Eastside, the very definition of a marginalized population.

Something about seeing people at their lowest and most desperate, half-clothed from turning tricks for drugs while hating themselves for it, opens into a profound level of intimacy. I am blessed to enter the darkest place of people whose sins are far more public than those of the rest of us. Constant humiliation makes the people I work with especially vulnerable, and vulnerable in almost every way: to violence, to exploitation, to false hope and finally to despair. When allowed into these dark places, it is my privilege, and that of all InSite staff, to communicate worth and love instead of judgment and scorn.

The day nurse asks me to keep an eye out for a specific participant—a regular who comes in several times a day. She hadn't been seen yet. Later that night, the woman finally comes in, and she's beaming. "I went to see my daughter today! And I didn't use all day! F---, soon I'm gonna get off this s---!" We break out in applause and cheers, celebrating her triumphs with her—as she mixes her drugs to take in a few minutes in our facility. Other participants in the room are excited as well; two of them come over to hug her.

Another regular later chats with me in the treatment room as I dress his abscess, trying not to cringe away from the overwhelming odour he emanates. "It would have been my anniversary with my wife today, if she hadn't gone missing. We've both been down and out, but she took care of me out here. Now, I got nobody to talk to. This is the first human touch I've had today." I look up, startled. I am wearing gloves, holding my breath, cleaning his sores with a 10-inch sterile Q-tip. Even this, my deficient attempt to heal, is taken as love by a man desperate for human connection. I am ashamed.

I finish dressing the wound, clean up, remove my gloves and give him a hug. I hop up on the treatment bench next to him and we sit together and talk for another 15 minutes: about life, love and faith. He says goodbye, and then asks for a referral to an exit program. I give it to him. He knows the referral is merely one point along our journey together, and that I will listen to his story whether he goes to the program or not. As a Christian, I know that his life is part of God's real story of redemption. InSite is one of the few places where I get to hear it openly spoken, with trust, without judgment.

Well, it's beyond "fair use" to quote the whole article!  I do recommend reading it all, though.  (H/T John Stackhouse)

I haven't time for a long post this morning, so here's the story I alluded to yesterday.

There is one upside to allowing several months to elapse between visits with the grandchildren:  the thrill of realizing how much they have grown in the interim.  During my recent visit, all three of the young Daleys surprised me.  This is Jonathan's story.

The assignment:  clean up the boys' bedroom, which is also the playroom, especially the craft area.  Crafts are probably second only to Legos as a Daley favorite activity, and papers, beads, pipe cleaners, stones, cereal boxes, paper plates, and other supplies were spread wide, intermingled with precious "I can't possibly throw that away" creations.  After a psychologically draining couple of hours, the job was done, but my favorite part came at the beginning.

Jonathan explained that the reason papers were piled up on the craft table was that their plastic file pockets had fallen off the wall.   I suggested he go ask Daddy to put them back up.

"No," Jonathan replied. "I'll take care of it."

He clattered down the stairs from the attic to the basement, and returned bearing the electric drill and a box of bits.  After selecting the correct bit, and affixing it to the drill, he proceded to drill two holes, insert two screws, and hang the file pockets once more.

Jonathan did accept a small amount of help, in the form of (1) allowing Mom to provide two new screws when he discovered that his own stash did not have the right kind, (2) allowing Grandma to hold the file pocket up while he marked the location for drilling the second hole, and (3) bowing to a reminder that the job is not complete until the tools are returned to their proper locations.  But truthfully, we were just hovering, and he could have managed it all on his own.

Not bad, I say, for a guy still a few months shy of his seventh birthday.

Free-Range Kids:  Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, by Lenore Skenazy (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2009)
Paperback subtitle:  How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)

I've been following (and blogging about) Free-Range Kids for quite a while now, so it's about time I finally read the book.  First off, in case you don't bother to read the rest of this post:  Get a hold of a copy of this book and read it.  If you are tempted to dismiss the free-range movement as crazy, irresponsible parenting, this will reassure you.  If you're already sold on this idea, it will open your eyes to how we got to the point of needing it.

Being so familiar with the Free-Range Kids blog, and even having made some contributions myself, I thought I knew what to expect from the book.  Boy was I wrong.

I was shocked.

It was a revelation nearly as great as the one I had seven years ago, when I discovered the sea change that had taken place in childbirth practices since our children were born.

Lenore Skenazy, dubbed "America's Worst Mom" (google it) and made the center of a media storm for daring to let her New York City-bred, public transit-savvy, nine-year-old son take a trip on the subway by himself; Lenore Skenazy, Ms. Free-Range Kids herself, is ...

Tame.

Tame.  There's no other word for it.  That someone as mild and safety-conscious as Skenazy is considered dangerously revolutionary shows just how much has changed in the last 30 years.  She sings the praises of car seats, never suggesting that, for example, Pennsylvania's laws requiring them for children up to eight years old borders on the ridiculous.  She wouldn't hear of letting a kid ride a bike without a helmet.  She trusts government studies and mainstream medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics, never questioning the back-to-sleep campaign, nor the current childhood vaccination schedule.  I'm not saying she's necessarily wrong (though I certainly don't always agree), but she's hardly radical.

Here's an example of what she's fighting, where she stands, and a scenario many would call crazy (though I call it wonderful).  Let's begin with her description of the Lou and Lou Safety Patrol videos available online from Playhouse Disney.

The Lous are a brother and sister of maybe three or four years old who call themselves the "Safety Patrol."  They spring into action when their six- or sevenish sister actually wants to make their dad breakfast for his birthday.

"Not so fast!" squeak the safety-loving sibs as their sister tries to cook some eggs.  "Never touch a pot or pan on the stove.  Let a grown-up."  They plunk an orange safety cone in front of the stove to keep her away.

Undaunted, the sister drifts down the counter and reaches for a knife.  "You have a safety violation!" chime her bad cop-bad cop siblings.  "You should always stay away from sharp knives and let a grown-up help if you need to slice something."

Skenazy's response?

Now, I'm not saying that six-year-olds make the ideal short-order chefs and let's let 'em loose near the french-fry vat.  But the constant refrain of "Get a grown-up!  Let a grown-up!" reinforces the whole idea that, rather than trying to learn any kind of real-world skill, kids should sit back and leave it all up to the adults."

Of course, she's right, and apparently it needs to be said.  But contrast this with a scene I observed on a recent visit with our daughter's family.

Our granddaughter, barely two years old, is helping cut vegetables for an omelet.  With her small paring knife, she hacks contentedly at a mushroom while Mom works on the rest of breakfast.  She has been begging for months to be allowed to do this job, and her mother has recently decided she has the coordination to begin her apprenticeship.  At her current skill level—about 10 minutes per mushroom—her contributions are small, but her brothers, ages four and six, began at the same age and are now safe, effective, and  enthusiastic vegetable choppers.  And stove users.  (Not to mention that the six-year-old is a dab hand with an electric drill, but that's another story.)

Now that might be considered radical—but 40 years ago I babysat a couple of British boys, ages three and five, who fixed their own dinner, including heating vegetables on the stove.  I wonder what their parents thought about their American neighbors' kids—and vice versa.

Read the book, and you'll get a glimpse of what children are up against these days.  Read about the sixth grader, assigned to design and execute a "free-range" project.  Feel her fear of the strangers on the sidewalk as she walks solo to the grocery store (half a mile away from home) for the first time in her life, and feel her humiliation when one of them asks, "Where is your mommy, young lady?"  Sixth grade.  Since Skenazy neglects to mention that this was a six-year-old prodigy, I assume the girl walking without her mommy was at least 11 years of age.

Or consider this report, written by another girl from the same middle school class.  She had taken her dog to the vet, where at first she was merely ignored.

"Good morning," Emma said and the vet turned sharply around.

"Hi. Where is your mommy, little girl?"  Her sharp voice echoed against the green walls.  A little surprised by the vet's tone, Emma answered that her mom was at work.  The vet looked troubled.  "Do you have your mom's phone number with you?  I might have to give her a call."  She quickly dialed the given number.  "Hi!  This is Dr. S.  Your daughter is here.  Can I actually give her instructions?"

In the end, the vet wrote a page of doggie dos and don'ts and handed it to Emma.  "Oh wait!"  The vet snatched the letter back.  "Can you read?"

I could quote pages and pages of this kind of story.  But I won't.  You'll enjoy them much more if you read the book, because Skenazy is the kind of writer I want to be.  She writes well, she writes seriously—and at the same time she's so funny I'd have enjoyed the book even if I didn't agree with the premise.  I know that, because I still laughed in the sections were I disagree vehemently with what she says.

Read about how DVD's of the original Sesame Street shows are labelled "intended for adults"—because they "model the wrong behavior," e.g. "Alistair Cookie" with his pipe, children playing in a vacant lot, a girl riding her tricycle without a helmet.  Take a look at how television (news and other programming) begat and nurtured a culture of fear and a totally skewed view of what's dangerous in our lives—and what's not.

TV historian [Robert] Thompson [says], "I don't think there's a single episode of Law and Order that could have even been shown before 1981."  That's because, until then, [its] graphic images were taboo.  In fact, they were the stuff of porn.

[O]nce we see horrific images, only half of our brain takes the time to say, "Wow.  That makeup person did an incredible job with those puncture wounds." ... The other half of our brain just takes in those gruesome images wholesale and files them under "Sick World, comma, What we live in."

In his book The Science of Fear, Daniel Gardner explains that once an image gets into [the] "reptilian" part of the brain, not only can you not shake it, you also can't extricate it from all the other images and feelings jostling around in there, either.  After all, it's only been the last hundred years or so that the brain has started seeing realistic-looking images (TV, movies) that weren't directly applicable to its fate (lions, spears).  So it hasn't figured out yet how to separaae the real form the manufactured.

Thanks to the news media, we have absorbed a completely false view of the chances a child will be abducted and murdered by a stranger.

According to Warwick Cairns, who wrote the book How to Live Dangerously:  if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped and held overnight by a stranger, how long would you have to keep her outside, unattended, for this to be statistically likely to happen?

About seven hundred and fifty thousand years.

How about the Hallowe'en candy scare that altered trick-or-treating forever? Razor blades in apples, poisoned candy?  The truth?

There has never been a single substantiated instance of any child dying from a stranger's poisoned Halloween candy.

Never.

And here's one after my own heart:  The danger of salmonella from eating raw cookie dough?  Much too low to deprive our children of one of life's glories.

The next excited me, too, because even 50 years ago eating snow was a forbidden pleasure.

Joel Forman, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on environmental health, was quoted as saying, "I can say that I'm not aware of any clinical reports of children becoming ill from eating snow.  And I looked."

On the other hand, when I was a child the snow was picking up residue from atomic bomb tests, so I can't blame my parents for a little paranoia.

If you study the odds, the one thing you will not let your children do is go anywhere in an automobile, car seat or no.  But that's not going to happen, which may explain why we prefer to avoid risk calculations.

Our misguided hysteria is not all the media's fault.  Lawyers can take a hefty share of the blame, as many bizarrely restrictive policies are the direct result of lawsuit-phobia.  Such as school buses that will not drop children off unless they are met by a "responsible adult"—if not, the child is taken back to school.  And the demise of really exciting playground equipment, and diving boards at swimming pools.  Here's one for the record books:  a release form from California.

I fully understand my minor's participation may involve risk of serious injury or death. 

That's for a piano recital.  What are they afraid of?  The ghost of Beethoven causing havoc over a mangled Für Elise?

While we're assigning blame, let's not forget greedy capitalists.  Like the "professional babyproofer" who promoted toilet lid locks on national television by intoning, "On average two children a week die in toilets."  The stats from the Consumer Product Safety Commission on accidental drowning in toilets of children under five?  Four per year.  Or the sellers of the "Thudguard," a helmet to protect toddlers learning to walk.  Dr. F. Sessions Cole, chief medical officer at the St. Louis Children's Hospital, reports that of their sixty-five to seventy thousand patients per year, exactly none were toddlers with significant head trauma from instability while learning to walk.  (No statistics available on the instability caused by wearing a helmet while trying to learn to walk.)

There are hucksters everywhere happy to take advantage of parents with more money than sense.  Don't trust your own hand to make sure the bath water is safe for your child?  Buy a turtle bath toy that will flash, "too hot!"  Don't trust your child's natural padding (and unnatural diaper padding) to protect his little bottom from falls while he learns to walk?  Someone will sell you a harness to hold him up while he toddles.  Too busy or too frightened to let your little girl experience the joys of water firsthand?  "Baby Neptune exposes little ones to the wonders of water in their world—whether they're stomping in the rain, splashing in the bathtub, playing 'catch me if you can' with the tide on the beach...."  And how does Baby Neptune accomplish this feat, safely and dryly?  It's a video of other children doing all those wonderful wet things.

Still another culprit inciting us to terror:  the busybodies who not only encapsulate their own children, but feel it their duty to do the same for yours, even to the extent of reporting you (anonymously, of course) to Child Protective Services.  Unfortunately, as I learned on the FRK blog, that's not a baseless fear.  But, like much of what terrifies us, it is an uncommon occurrence.  More common are the other parents who will merely try to shame you for taking the shackles off your kids.  As John Holt said,

One of the saddest things I’ve learned in my life, one of the things I least wanted to believe and resisted believing for as long as I could, was that people in chains don’t want to get them off, but want to get them on everyone else. “Where are your chains?” they want to know. “How come you’re not wearing chains? Do you think you are too good to wear them? What makes you think you’re so special?”

Skenazy has some good advice for this problem, too.

Blamers thrive on shame.  Take away their power.  Do not be ashamed of making parenting choices based on who your kid is, rather than on what the neighbors will say.  Why are they talking about you anyway?

Did I say Lenore Skenazy's book was tame?  Well, yes.  It is.   But that doesn't mean it's not vitally important, on the order of Last Child In the Woods.  If you have young children, read it.  If your children are grown, read it anyway; it will make you laugh, and your grandchildren will thank you.  But don't waste any time bemoaning what you wish you had done differently.  I've done more than my share of that, and it's counterproductive. That's another message of this book:  Children are amazingly resilient, and their well-being does not hinge on every parental decision we make.  It really doesn't. We don't have that much power—and we shouldn't want it.

One more quote and the sticky notes bristling from the pages of Free-Range Kids will be gone.  Free-ranging is not about irresponsible parenting, any more than unschooling is about leaving children without educational support and guidance.  (emphasis mine)

Free-Range Parents are not hands off.  We give our children the tools to be safe and independent, and we listen to them too.

Jonathan's birthday is coming up, and he told me what he really wants:  a real Boba Fett costume, from the local costume store.  (Perhaps it was Jango Fett, or Olive Fett, or some other miscellaneous Fett.  I lost track of the Star Wars characters once inflation set in and Episode 1 became Episode 4.)

I expressed my surprise, because he had already created wonderful costumes—headgear and jetpacks—for himself and his siblings, out of cereal boxes, styrofoam cups, and pipe cleaners.

"I am only creative," he replied, "because I don't have what I want."

Bingo.

There, from the mouth of a six-year-old, is the driving force behind innovation.

Not long ago, my lovely external monitor gave out completely.  I suppose I could complain about how nothing lasts well these days, but it lasted a lot longer than the Gateway computer it originally came with, which self-destructed after 19 months of an 18-month warranty.^*

One does not need an external monitor, and I was prepared to do without for a while, but Porter, God bless him, cares for his wife's desires as well as her needs...and an external monitor is especially nice when the regular one is a small laptop screen.  So we ventured out shopping.

And blundered into a CompUSA monitor sale.

At first I was very disappointed, because my old monitor was essentially square, and every single new one was rectangular, with more width than height.  I've always found height more important, as it reduces scrolling—and square even better.  But apparently the rest of the world does not agree with me.

We decided on a ViewSonic VX2250 22" widescreen LED monitor.  (The link takes you to Amazon, but we actually bought it from CompUSA.)  And I've decided it's cool.

Really cool; that was a selling point.  My office gets hot from all the computing equipment, and it's lovely not having the monitor pour out detectible heat.  So we're saving energy at two levels:  the monitor and the air conditioner.

And, in the spirit of New Year's Resolution #4 (Like More Things), it turns out that I love the widescreen format!   Much credit goes to Porter, who pointed out that I now can have, in effect, three screens, by dividing the new monitor into two, side-by-side windows.  It's not a perfect system, because the resulting windows are a bit smaller than I like, but I can easily switch between that and full-screen mode as needed.  It's really helpful not to have to keep flipping back and forth among screens.

I understand that the main reason for the popularity of this screen shape is for watching movies.  The ability to watch movies does not even make the list of what I look for in a computer monitor, but it's true that if I'm watching something by myself, there's no point in turning on the television—this screen does very nicely, thanks.