Lift Up Your Hearts!

You’re surprised I waited so long for this one, right?  I value home education so highly that my gratitude for that privilege almost goes without saying.  (But gratitude should never go without saying.)   Because my joyous thanksgiving for the legal protection that homeschoolers now enjoy cannot be overstated, I will understate it here.

Educational opportunities have expanded for everyone, not just homeschoolers, over the last 50 years. (More)

I’m thankful for push-button phones, cordless phones, cell phones, answering machines, voice mail, Voice over IP, and video calling.

I didn't mind dialing a number—numbers were shorter back then—but phone buttons are used for a lot more than dialing these days, and that became possible when the clicks were replaced by tones.  (Can anyone besides me remember phones that converted button presses into clicks?)

Once upon a time the 25-foot phone cord was the great new technology that let one actually get some work done while talking on the telephone.  It was almost always in the kitchen, where it may have caused a child to trip or become entangled, but was overall much safer than using a cell phone while driving.^*  Still, cordless phones are much more fun, enabling work to be done in other parts of the house … and poolside relaxation without fear of missed calls. (More)

By now you’re tired of hearing me say this, but you won’t believe…

…the things one couldn’t do without a Y chromosome when I was growing up.

My own parents were great—and a bit ahead of their time—at encouraging me not to be fenced in by my sex.  I had backhoes and construction sets as well as dolls for toys.  I was encouraged to climb trees—and mountains.   But society at large was still severely restrictive.

In sixth grade I expressed the wish to be an astronaut, and was emphatically told by my (male) teacher that girls could never be astronauts, because all astronauts had to be test pilots, and test pilots were only men.  (Take that, Sally Ride!) (More)

I am of the last generation to know what life was like before pocket calculators.  Even that name is revealing; who calls them that anymore?  Who remembers when “adding machines” were big, clunky things like typewriters?  (Have you seen a typewriter outside of a museum or an old movie?)

I remember my parents doing their taxes with a nifty little plastic device with a set of numbered dials like a telephone.  (Uh, who remembers dial phones?)  There was a 1’s dial, a 10’s dial, a 100’s dial, etc. and you used a stylus to turn them to the correct numbers.  You could add and subtract by turning the dials clockwise or counterclockwise.  The device was handy for checking all those tax numbers, and lots of fun for me when I could get my hands on it.

As a science major in college, I had many tedious calculations to do, and often found it worthwhile to make a trek through the cold and snowy winter night to use one of the half dozen Wang calculators made available to students by the physics department.

When I graduated from college, I received a thrilling (and expensive) gift:  A Texas Instruments SR-10 calculator!  It was especially cool because it handled scientific notation.  Take a look at the keyboard and note that it did a whole lot less than the calculators you can buy today for $10 at your friendly neighborhood Walmart.  The last time I visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, I found my wonderful graduation present on display amongst the other relics.

I firmly believe that everyone should know how to do basic arithmetic functions easily and quickly, and think it’s deplorable that we have cashiers who can’t make change without a register to do the calculations.  I’ve never forgotten Isaac Asimov’s prescient story, The Feeling of Power (1958).

I also believe that everyone should know how to make bread, but that doesn’t stop me from being thankful to be able to buy bread at the store.

Thus, without apology, I am thankful for the handy, portable, convenient, powerful, inexpensive, labor-saving pocket calculator.

When I was young there was no such thing as recycling, per se.  We still produced a whole lot less trash than the average family today, because we had a whole lot less stuff, and what we had was often reused (e.g. milk bottles).  Food scraps went, not into the trash or down the sink, but into a compost pile in the back yard, where hardworking worms and bugs and microbes recycled it their own way into fertile soil.

Times changed.  Almost without being aware of it we had become a disposable society, and our piles of trash grew.  And grew.  Newspapers could be recycled—indeed, one could make good money by collecting people’s old papers and taking them to the paper plant.  But metal, glass, and the ubiquitous varieties of plastic went straight to the landfill. (More)

Think “reproductive freedom” and what comes to mind?  Birth control?  Abortion-on-demand?  The freedom, in short, not to reproduce while indulging in the activity specifically designed for reproduction?

What I’m thankful for is the inverse.

My generation grew up in the days of Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb and fears that the world would outgrow its food supply by the mid-1980s.  It was seriously suggested that giving aid to distressed peoples was morally wrong, on the grounds that helping them now would only enable them to reproduce and then more people would starve to death later. (More)

Overall, society has become much ruder, cruder, and lewder than it was 50, or even 25, years ago.  But sexual harassment, if hardly a thing of the past, is at least—like smoking—generally disapproved of, and the woman on the receiving end of a “friendly” pat on the rear from her boss or suggestive remarks from her co-workers now has legal recourse.  In the past, enduring such treatment was often considered as much a part of the job as making coffee.  (On a personal note, I worked with great people and did not have this kind of problem myself.  I didn’t make the coffee, either.)

Maybe we’ve gone too far in enforcing the new rules—suspending a kindergartener for kissing a classmate comes to mind—but for the most part they are in place because they are necessary.  I’m thankful for this civility.

It’s okay—it’s good—to be thankful for small things, too.  It may not be an earthshaking improvement, but I’m thankful for digital cameras.  One key to taking good photographs is taking lots of photographs, and in times past only the professional could afford to do so.  Now anyone can.

Digital cameras are also great for children.  Instant feedback is so much more satisfying than waiting to finish the roll of film so it could be developed—and not wanting to waste any pictures because film + developing = a lot of money.  Now there are cameras that let the youngest learn to take good photographs.

What’s more, good cameras—even video cameras—are small enough to carry in a purse.  A small purse!  Our first video camera was a huge monster that took full-sized VHS tapes.

Organizing photos into albums has never been easier, and there are so many more wonderful things you can do to present them.  On the other hand, having so many more pictures and options makes more work, even if the work is easier.

But that’s a minor quibble.  I love my tiny, handy, good-quality digital camera!

There’s no doubt the sociological upheavals caused by the so-called Women’s Liberation Movement have done much harm, but one great thing to come out of that time is a greater closeness between fathers and their children. 

My father was always actively involved with his children—unusually so for that generation, I believe—even before my mother’s early death forced him to take on double parenting duty.  And yet in his journals of our early years he always refers to the times my mother was not at home as times when he was “babysitting the children.”  No one I know with young children in this century would even think such a thought, much less express it.  How can one “babysit” one’s own child? (More)

It’s quite possible that the environment we live in is in worse shape now than 50 years ago, especially in places like China and Africa.  But here, now, it looks, tastes, and smells a lot better.  And not just because fewer people are smoking.

I remember when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire, and when it was said you could develop film in the Genesee downstream from the Kodak factory.  My father worked for General Electric in Schenectady, and used to say that they returned the water to the Mohawk cleaner than it was when they took it out, which was no doubt true but should not be taken as an endorsement of the effluent.

The air in Pittsburgh was so full of smoke and particulates that when the Church of the Ascension expanded, they used black stone in order to match the soot-darkened original.

Automobile exhaust was something awful.  It’s not nice even now to walk or bike along a road full of cars, but nothing like what it was before pollution controls.

I even remember when the Freihofer bread delivery truck was horse-drawn, and you can guess what that did to the streets.  (But I loved to sit on our porch and watch it pass by!)

Environmentally, this is not a secure time to be living.   What’s more, I know that the improvements to our air and water quality are only partly because of pollution control laws.  Pittsburgh is a clean, breathable city because they no longer make steel in the home of the Steelers.  We have outsourced and off-shored our pollution as well as our jobs.

But when it comes to breathing and drinking, I’m thankful for today.

This post could also be viewed as a mere excuse for sharing my favorite Tom Lehrer song of that era.

Into the Silent Land:  A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation , by Martin Laird  (Oxford University Press, 2006)

The physical benefits of meditative techniques are well established, and I’d like to be able to take advantage of them.  What has hindered me is that many—though not all—of the studies have focused on Transcendental Meditation (TM), the Eastern religious aspects of which have led me to keep meditation in general at arm’s length since I first learned of it some 40 years ago.  It will not do to gain a physical benefit at a spiritual loss—I can’t help thinking of The Magician’s Nephew, in which Digory was tempted to steal an apple that would have cured his dying mother, but if he had done so, both he and his mother would have later “looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness.”

Yet Digory, having passed the test, was eventually given another apple, one that healed his mother in the right way. (More)

What would today be without being thankful for our veterans, and all who work and sacrifice to protect the rest of us?

In the spirit of the Good New Days, I’m also thankful for our all-volunteer military.  The military draft cast a long, difficult, and painful shadow on life in the 1960s and 70s.  In that respect it is much better to be young today.  A career in the armed services can be a very good choice—but it should be just that, a choice.  It’s better for families, for society, and for the military as well.

Thinking in Pictures:  And Other Reports from My Life with Autism, by Temple Grandin (Vintage, 2006) (Expanded from the original 1995 version)

I’ve already written about Temple Grandin, the movie, which was the inspiration for getting this book from the library.  It’s well worth reading, and the only reason I’m sending back unread the two other books of hers I picked up at the same time is that I realized I must put the brakes on my reading for a while.  At the very least I need to substitute books I won’t be tempted to review. 

Thinking in Pictures would have convinced me, if Grandin’s own commentary on the DVD had not, that the movie is an accurate, if not perfect, portrayal of her life.  It’s fascinating to read about autism from the inside out, as it were, and also interesting to note her opinion that for all the advances we have made in understanding autism and Asperger’s syndrome, as a child in the 1950’s she had a few advantages over today’s children.  School classrooms were well-ordered and quiet; the noise and chaos often seen classrooms now would have been impossible for her to handle.  Parents, teachers, and other adults worked hard to instill good manners and polite behavior into children; these are difficult but essential skills for autistic children to learn, but they are sadly neglected today.  Finally, there were no video games then, which encourage solitary activity; she was forced to interact directly with other children through board games, outdoor play, and other normal, 1950’s-era activities. (More)

A couple of generations ago, overseas travel for pleasure was only for the rich.  Even business travel was uncommon, unless one was a missionary or in the military.  Today we visit our family in Switzerland more frequently, with less effort, and possibly even with less relative expense than my family travelled from New York to Florida to visit my grandparents when I was young.

Telephone service was once so expensive that long distance calls (remember long distance?) had to be kept brief—as in just a few minutes.  Overseas calls were out of the question most of the time.  Today our grandchildren have long conversations with us on the phone, and we can call Switzerland at six cents a minute.  Skype costs even less (less as in free); the quality may not be as good as I'd like, but it allows us to see each other.  The long-dreamed-of video phone is here! (More)

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