Ah so, Ah so, Johnny Bunko

From the mind of the man who brought you A Whole New Mind comes Johnny Bunko. And if you're a stiff stuck in a work-a-day world you just can seem to get out of, then Bunko's your boy.

Daniel Pink, whose book A Whole New Mind ought to be a must-read for anybody in education, regardless of level, has again hit the ground running with a terrific idea that's being sold as the What Color is Your Parachute for the naught decade's latter half. While I've not read it (it just hit the stores last week), I've read of it on Pink's Website, and if it's as forward thinking as it appears to be, Bunko could live up to all the hype. There's even a video:

If I get around to it, I'll write more about this book, but in the meantime, if you've not read A Whole New Mind, I can't recommend it enough. I know schools around the nation that have read it or had their administrators read it, and I've recommended it to the members of my own department.

There's a Hebrew quotation I live by as a teacher, something I encountered in my very first year: "Do not condemn your children to your own mode of learning, for they were born in a different world." Both of these books, but especially Mind, will open your eyes to the potential of treating your children/students differently, but more importantly, to the powerful impact of thinking differently about yourself and the way you think. It could, if recent neuroscience is correct, stop you from losing your mind, literally.

Restoration Hardware in my Pottery Barn

Ladies, I know this will come as no surprise to you, but gentlemen, make no mistake...Size does matter. Regardless of what you've heard, it's quite obvious that if you are a true American, you must aspire to have really big furniture. I mean overstuffed, bloated, sofas...
Immense dressers...

And dining room tables capable of hosting an entire Viking raiding party...

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with this. Oh, I could try to connect the dots. You know...Mass mailings of catalogs from companies like those mentioned in this post's title create a desire for the opulance and splendor of "The Wellington" or "The Turner" collection to fill bedrooms or dining rooms and thus people buy huge homes outside their means in order to accomodate the huge size of this furniture using tricky lending packages they really don't understand and which eventually end in foreclosure creating a crisis of national proportion.

No, I won't blame that crisis on companies like those named above. Furniture doesn't drive home sales, obviously. However, the standard of living suggested in the catalogs published by these companies is certainly not middle class, and yet, well...that's what really gets me. I mean, how did I end up on their mailing list? One would think that with all the access to information we have these days, companies would better target their mailing of glossy, clearly expensive catalogs by accessing home sales records and mailing only to those homes of 3000 square feet or more. And yet, here I sit with over 30 catalogs a year from no less than five different companies all of whom manufacture furniture so large it wouldn't even fit through my front door.

Of course, the size of the furniture isn't the only thing disproportionate about these pieces. Take a look at their prices???!! $179 for a measly nightstand? Did I miss something here? I mean, these are mass-produced pieces of furniture, right?? And if it's really big, it's probably "Assemble it yourself" quality.

Or maybe I'm just looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the furniture isn't bloated, immense, or obese. Maybe it's comfy, homey, roomy, enveloping, ample...like a bosom. That'd make sense. Most of us would like to nestle our heads back there again. Maybe if they sold it to me that way I'd like it better. Instead of naming their furniture lines after the blue-blooded, landed gentry who traipsed the English heather a century or so ago, why not anthropomorphize it?

Look at this:Now, that's comfy looking, homey. Why not say this sofa is from the "Buxom Chest" collection and comes only in "creamy milkmaid"? That seems reasonable and certainly helps me understand why I'd buy this sofa more than "The Charleston Collection."

Or what about this one:

In a nod to Monty Python, I'd say this couch is from the "Huge Tracts of Land" collection and comes in a beautiful "Bloody Lipstick." Again, at least I can see that, and laugh at it as I max out my credit card.

Or it's just me, right? It's my problem. I'm just a miserable old curmudgeon. (Is that redundant? Doubly so?) Sure, I could be envious of those who have "Huge Tracts of Land" and "Buxom Chests", but I truly think there's something more here. It's an entire American obsession with size. In our bodies, we want to be thin, trim, fit, but our appetites deny us this. The land of plenty is too much for us. We succumb to its cornucopias. Plates of food large enough for two people and then some. Cars the size of small busses. Movie theaters large enough to hold 24 screens (though said screens are barely bigger than a large screen TV). Acres of parking lots at malls the size of small townships. We have it all. But think about it. What do we do? We complain about it. "It's too crowded." "The food is bland." "The blindspot is too big." Or my favorite, spoken by an employee at a local Movie-emporium, "I hate working here."

I guess what I'd like to suggest is the tired epiphany that, bigger isn't better. (This post, big as it is, is an excellent example of that truism.) It doesn't make us any happier, more satisfied, or better fed. Although, sitting here in my small sofa with my wife's feet contending for space with this laptop...I guess a bigger sofa would make things a bit more comfy.

I grow old, I grow old, /I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

When I was much younger than my current measure of 4 decades, I berated the generation ahead of me for their sleeper hold on the culture. I was tired of Gilligan's Island reruns, Grateful Dead shows, and Abbie Hoffman running around telling me I had to stick it to the man (rest in peace, Abbie). I was part of the ascendent culture and felt smothered, out numbered as we were, by the vast mass of humanity spawned by returning GIs. I recall reading an essay in Time magazine wherein the BabyBoomers were described as a neurotic generation for whom every twig they step on becomes fodder for a therapy session. How vindicated I felt. I was part of a valid culture that needed to be heard, and someone was hearing us.

So now, here I am, some twenty-years later watching David Byrne, one of the idols of my young adulthood, grey-haired now, diminuitive, and far more sedate on stage, crooning his way through one of the most beautifully sublime of all love songs, "Naive Melody." And what am I feeling...? Old! I want to drag the past into the future, grab the youth of today and expose them to the amazingness of Jonathan Demme's collaborative masterpiece, Stop Making Sense. I want to show them the brilliance of Byrne's performance there, his sublime dance with a floor lamp. I want to deny the Byrne of now and conjur the big-suited Byrne, pencil-necked Byrne, champion of all cultured nerds of the 80s.

Ah but christ sake! What does it matter? And who am I anyway, to inflict my culture, fading as it may be, upon the progenitors of tomorrows visions and art?

So you take a look. Compare the two versions, 20 years apart (or so). And then tell me I'm wrong, or at the very least, point me to something new to get my mind off this....

Vs.

Oh, I should have been a pair of ragged claws/scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I'm da DJ AND the Rapper

So I went fishing today... searching through the deep pools of my musings and rants, just to see what I could catch that was worth keeping. I found this one. It's amazing what a little vitriol does for one's prose. Makes it all kicky and jumpy...full of energy, but not necessarily well reasoned arguments. Ah who cares! This is my entry into the world of hip-hop. Now I'm gonna go git me some old-school Adidas and a leather jacket. Run-DMC ain't got nothin' on me. Remember this is several years old, so you're going to have to go back to the memory banks for this one, circa 2005.

It goes a little something like this...

The president said something so profoundly stupid this past week as to make my jaw drop. So here goes. Hold on to your hats, cause...

"I'm gettin' ready to lay it down, whack the track
gonna blaze a trail to the truth they lack.
'Said I'm not bound in the red white and blue
Gotta be a part of the thinkin' man's crew, to
your father and to your mother
ride the wave of the evidence from one lie to another and
spinnin' words like I'm kickin' it, freestyle
a blaze of light, clearin' the haze for a thousand mile.
What I'm preachin' you shoulda gotten long agos
but the Media heads ' blowin' smoke out their assholes
consolidation good for the airwaves? etcetera
Easier to keep free speech in check that way, ha!
So I'm broadband-bringin' it, no holds barred
By ' time I'm done they'll be feathered and tarred.
Not enough to stop at excoriation
Gotta hold 'em accountable for the State of the Nation."

(Excoriation...State of the Nation--that's the best rhyme I've made in a very long time...just an aside.)



Yo


So if you watched the news, or read a paper this week, buried somewhere in all the reportage (that's the French pronunciation, please: re-por-TAJ) on Katrina was, probably, if your paper/news station isn't owned by Ruppert Murdoch or other FOBs (friends of Bush), a quote from the appointed president (yes, I'm still bitter about election 2000) about the good that will come out of this tragedy: "But out of this devastation we're going to make it [the gulf coast] even better than it was. Trent Lott's house was destroyed; it was a beautiful house. But we're going to build it back just the way it was and I look forward to sitting on the porch with him.

Here, on the gulf coast so thoroughly destroyed by the epic storm, George W. Bush reminds us once again of his pedigree. As if it were not reminder enough that his tax cuts benefit the rich. As if it were not enough that the head of FEMA (Michael Brown) and the heads of numerous other governmental agencies are members of Bush's circle of friends. As if his status as a fortunate son were not enough...here, in these words which, due to their utterly crass nature we can only assume were not scripted, he offered in his everything's-gonna-be-alright...Brownie's-doin'-a-heck-of-a-job voice, Bush finally lets us know, once and for all, where the common man stands in relation to him--far enough away so the president and friends won't hear us reminding them that their shit stinks, too.

Tens of thousands of poor and middle class American's lost their homes, utterly and entirely. And the good news from the president is that Trent Lott's gonna rebuild, better than ever (with money from FEMA??? Not that he doesn't deserve it, just asking. Though I hope it takes him just as long standing in line to get his $2000 handout. Ah cynacism.) and our president will be sitting right on "The Porch" with Trent when it's all done, grinnin' like a carpetbagger. Will Trent open his home to some of the people who lost their meager homes to the waters that spilled over and through the levees that received 35 million dollars less in funding than they were supposed to have received? (Where'd that money go...? Oh yeah, War.) Sure, I can see it now. Trent and the President serving over 1000 lemonades /hour to the poor and destitute who just want to share The Porch with Mr. Lott.

But I'm too sensitive. This isn't about the race card. Ok, so Trent and Bush are both rich, white southerners. And hey, I don't really have any evidence that either of them will turn away the poor and destitute who would like to share in the great good fortune of the privileged class. So let's look at the image from a symbolic sense. What meanings does the image of George and Trent kickin' back conjure??? Is it of two men relaxing after a day of "hard work?" Hardly. If you remember what the president told us during the last debates, "War is hard work," and George and Trent have not just returned from the streets of Falujha. Is it an attempt to harken back to a simpler time, the Rockwellian America where we all had front porches, where after the day was done we would gather with family and neighbors to share a sunset or watch the romping play of our next generation? Well, I'm guessing here, but I can't envision Trent's place being a simple single home on a tree-lined street where neighbors are just a "can I borrow a cup of sugar?" away. If they're on the porch watching the sunset, it's probably over acres of professionally landscaped ground secured by fences, walls, or other such means of privacy. Symbolically, all I can read in the image of George and Trent on the porch is largess, privilege, and a blithe indifference to the gulf that separates them from the common man.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on them. After all, this disaster touched so many. I should feel sorry for all of them. And I do, even Trent. I cannot imagine losing my home (even if it's not the only one I have). But I can't hold back. The flood of lies and deceit and bungled policies is just too much, and like an Orleanean levee, I'm broken. Because you see, what I'm talking about goes beyond Katrina. It goes to the heart of waging a war founded from the first on deception. It is the thing hiding in the shadow of the tax breaks for the rich. It lurks behinds the curtains of scripted press conferences and government manipulation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. What I'm suggesting here is that George W. Bush has done more harm to the American image in the world than any president since Nixon. Not only is this President's perspective of reality so off base as to qualify him as hallucinatory, but his vision is so skewed by nepotism, egotism, neoconservatism, anti " liberal--intellectualism " , religious fanaticism, and a host of other -isms as to make him a danger to our society and all we know. His poor planning has colored desert sands red with the blood of almost 2000 US servicemen and women and left thousands more fighting for a goal that is shifting and elusive. His hiring of officials is marred by graft, and his fiscal policy has turned him into the biggest spender in all US presidential history. Finally (and only so because I'm getting tired), because he has a tenuous grasp of the economic stratification that typifies urban America (which brings us back to the quote where this jeremiad started), he has widened the gap between the haves and the have nots in a Reganesque fashion, and given millions of middle-class Americans reason to doubt why we even try to move up a ladder withdrawing ever farther from our grasp.

But it is not enough to criticize with clever insight and pretty imagery. Something must be done. Ex post facto accountability will not suffice here. This government ought to be held accountable for all the lies, miscalculations, and doublespeak it has unleashed upon the public since the day it took office. The flooding in New Orleans aside, seeing Trent and George on That Porch ought to infuriate every single American who cares about justice, equality, due process, and our place in the world. The evidence speaks loudly. Write to your congress men. Rip into those who support the president. Destroy him on the grounds I list above (and all the acres of ground I left untilled (or maybe tilled in letters last year...or the year before)). Now is not the time for conciliatory attitudes or consensus. There can be no consensus when one party rules the Congress and is so thoroughly convinced of its monstrous philosophy of neo-conservatism. These neocons embody what Emile Chartier warned about: "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only idea you have." The danger here is that those who are possessed of the idea are the ones elected to rule over this great nation, and that danger reaches into every nook and cranny of our lives, our bodies and our minds. You should all be afraid. You should be very afraid. And the only way to relieve this fear is to fight it, to oust it from this Porch of noblese oblige.

So this evening if you have a porch, go out and sit on it, and look out into the night sky. In the context of the universe, your life is but a blip, an insignificant smudge of atoms brought together for an infinitesimal time. But in the history of human kind, you are an incredible conglomeration of atoms filled with a potential never before seen in the universe. You have a singular power and will whose limitations are only self-imposed. It does not matter if you write a congressman, post notes via e-mail, or organize picket lines and camp out at the president's vacation home. What does matter is that you do something. Remember Gandhi's sentiment: Whatever you do will, in the scheme of things, be insignificant. But it is very important that you do it. Let your porch be where it starts, and let "The Porch" be what you end.

Uh...Yuck!

Ok, so I don't think I want to say too much about this other than...
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

You read it.

Just when you though it was safe to go back into the water.

Ann Coulter redux: How not to do journalism

It's not that I think I'm terribly observant. I mean, it's awfully simple to fault Ann Coulter for her sloppy journalism. It's not even that I think those who hear "the truth" in Coulter's writings ought to be sent back to high school, or at least be required to take a test in which they are asked to clearly identify black and white. Rather, it's because I think Coulter deserves to be called on the carpet (along with those on the opposite side of the spectrum who practice shoddy journalism) that I point you today to a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer's "Currents" section. Mark Bowden, coauthor of Blackhawk Down (originally a piece of outstanding journalism published by the Philadelphia Inquirer before being turned into a book), attempts to clear his name after Coulter printed factually incorrect statements regarding his statements on US involvement in Iraq.

As I noted above, such sloppy journalism is not the sole province of Coulter and the right. It is present, too much so nowadays, on the left as well as the right. Coulter, however, is a huckster of such rotten fruits of labor that one ought, at all costs, avoid puchasing any of her wares.

Umm...This is a sales pitch?

Ok, so I really don't want to talk politics on this blog, but is it me, or is the new "plan" solve the mess in Iraq, which the president has referred to as "Return on Success". . . is this for real? "Return on Success?" The rationale is that the more success we achieve in Iraq, the more soldiers we can send home. Right...doesn't the same thing happen when you win the war or achieve victory over your foe?

So how does success differ from winning the war, and how does winning the war differ from victory? "Victory in Iraq," which was the prevailing rhetoric and defined the mission there, has disappeared from the administration's lexicon. Now, it's about "return on success."

God! I feel so stupid. I think there's an "Interminable Idiocy Field" that radiates from Washington, DC and it must be growing, because it's almost reached us here in a Collegeville, PA. This will all end soon, right. Tell me it will, please? Mommy?