We the Lasagna Eaters?

My opinion on politicians stems from graduate school, when the professor asked for the best definition of the word politics.

Do I have to tell you who won? I told him that I thought politics was the art of displeasing the least amount of people.

Of course, I could really grow to like a politician. If one came along and said that, if elected, the first thing he was going to do was float a measure that would make term limits mandatory…well, that guy, I might like to hang out with.

Elected office was never envisioned as a career or even an occupation by the Founding Fathers. They saw it as a duty. If elected, a man would leave his farm, serve a particular amount of time, then—having done his duty—would return to his plow, allowing another of his neighbors to then go and serve.

If you think that’s a little pie-in-the-sky-ish, you should look up the background of Cincinnati—not the city in Ohio, per se, but its name. More precisely—Cincinnatus—the man from whom that town took its name. I won’t explain it to you now, but look it up. It will go a long way in clarifying how this republic of ours is supposed to work.

A lot of what has happened to our government is simple public perception. Ask where the government is located and you’ll get a stock answer. National government, well, that’s in Washington; State government, Harrisburg in Pennsylvania; city government, well heck, that’s in City Hall.

And how many times have you heard a sentence begin with the phrase, “When Reagan was running the country…” or  “When Clinton was running the country…”

But government in this country does not (or at least it’s not supposed to) reside in a city or a building. And presidents are not supposed to “run” the country, any more than Congressmen are supposed to run their districts.

Presidents administer our government for us. That’s why their office is called “The Administration.” And Congressmen represent their districts the way senators represent their states.

You see, the government is not located in Washington, D.C., Trenton, New Jersey, Bismarck, North Dakota, or in some historic building at Broad and Market streets in Philadelphia. Government in this republic resides in the people. That’s why the Preamble begins the way it does.

I know I’ve oversimplified this, but if you gave me three hundred pages instead of three hundred words, I couldn’t make it any clearer. We are the government. And the next politician that makes that point clear…well, aside from getting my vote, he just might be the first politician that gets invited to my home for lasagna.

And although you’ll find some good stuff on my Web site: www.goodwritersblock.com, you will not find my lasagna recipe. That’s one thing that doesn’t belong to We, the People.

A Book To Make You Think

As a writer, I understand the value of education, and in today’s atmosphere of rising expenses, I also understand why schools are feeling that currency noose tightening around their academic necks.

Good schooling—if it’s doing its job—teaches you how to learn. When I got my bachelor’s degree, my cousin, an Oxford-trained psychologist, told me, “Now your education really begins.”

School should give you the tools to continue your education.

I’ve heard many people point to Bill Gates as an example of why education is not so important. Gates dropped out of college and began Microsoft. So if you think you’ve got a shot to follow in those software footprints…good luck!

I think a far better example of a dropout making the grade is Louis LaMour. LaMour, one of America’s most prolific writers, dropped out of high school in Jamestown, North Dakota at age 15 and became a wandering man. He did a little of everything from sailing on merchant ships to working in a mine to boxing in small western towns. But he never…never, paused his education.

You see, Lamour was in love with books. As prolific a writer as he was, he was even more prolific a reader. Books were his intoxicants. He devoured them. He was addicted to them. He spent most of his eighty years of life in the company of them.

I’ve heard many young people today say that they just don’t have time to read. That phrase was one of Lamour’s pet peeves. He called it absolute nonsense. So he kept a personal record one year. He found that he had read twenty-five books while just waiting for people—waiting for them in restaurants, or in doctor’s offices, or while waiting for a bus…just waiting.

And he asks a vital question when he wants to know what’s more important—a night on the town or learning something that can be with you a lifetime?

LaMour is best known for writing westerns, like Hondo and The Haunted Mesa. But if there’s one Louis Lamour book I would recommend, it would be Education of a Wandering Man. I’ve read that book three times, and it has never failed to entertain and educate me. If you’ve never read a Louis Lamour book, then start with this one.

And if you are a Lamour fan but haven’t got to Education of a Wandering Man yet; it’s time you did so. I think it’s one of those books that can be enormously influential.

                Because it will make you think…

Taking Monday Morning Quarterbacking to a Fault

What Joe Paterno took to his grave regarding the recently alleged sexual assaults at Penn State University, we’ll never truly know. In hindsight, many are sanctimoniously declaring that they know full well what they would have done, had they found themselves in his place.

Sportscasters are now quick to say that Paterno may have been a man of principles, but he should have done more when notified of pedophilic behavior in one of his staff at Penn State University.

Paterno, they say, should have taken matters into his own hands and gone above the heads of the University staff members that oversee him—specifically, the athletic director and college president.

But instead, Paterno followed the regulation that dictates what he must do; that is, he reported to his superiors what was reported to him by one of his subordinates. You see, Paterno was a rule-follower, and journalists—especially sports journalists—often hate those types.

And this prompts the media intelligentsia to now condemn him for one of the very traits that factored into his strong principles—his strict adherence to rules. He practiced it himself, and demanded it of his players.

Now it’s easy for me to rationalize this way. I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life in military and quasi-military careers, where we are trained to report complaints such as this to our superior.

What we are not trained to do is to follow-up, if you will, to see if our superiors are handling the complaint to our satisfaction. And that is exactly what Paterno’s detractors are insisting: that he should have seen to it that the college authorities took the action he thought was appropriate.

In fact, they are saying that Paterno should have supervised his supervisors. At least that’s what they would have done. They would have taken matters into their own hands and damn the consequences.

This hits close to home with me since it’s a preferential theme in some of my writing. The protagonist in my novel, Grave Departure, does precisely that. He has departmental rules that dictate what he must do, yet his dilemma is to decide if he will follow the rules or take matters into his own hands. And—like Joe Paterno—he must live with the consequences. And also like Paterno, he’ll most likely take certain of those consequences to his grave.

My intention with Grave Departure was to make the reader think: To think, “Did the protagonist do the right thing for the wrong reasons? Or did he do the wrong thing for the right reasons?” And most importantly, “What would I have done in this situation?”

But now, instead of asking themselves what they would have done in Joe Paterno’s position, too many analysts are saying they know what they would have done in his position.  They fail to ask, “Did he do the right thing for the wrong reasons? Or perhaps, the wrong thing for the right reasons?”

However we look at it, Joe Paterno took his consequences to his grave. They may have even hastened his death. I truly hope he rests in peace.

He was a good man. A good man faced with an agonizing dilemma—one I hope I’ll never have to face.

And that’s how I’ll remember him. One rule-follower to another.

Rather Horse-Riding than Horse....

Last night I spent three hours watching British-produced mysteries on PBS. I enjoy trying to solve their intricate plotting. How can England can turnout quality drama like this, while America creates amateurish, soft-porn, loaded with adolescent humor?

Now there’s a mystery I can’t solve.

If we have succumbed to the “dumbing-down” of America, I don’t think TV is the origin; I just think it’s a symptom.

For the root cause, I look to our educational system. Back in 2008, I wrote a series of columns on the lack of writing ability in many of our high school graduates. And I don’t mean their lack of verbal brilliance—although that is a problem.

No, I mean they can’t write! They print—everything! I learned to print in the first and second grade. I learned to write—what today’s educators call “cursive”—in subsequent grades.

But many, if not most of today’s public high school graduates can neither read cursive writing, nor can they write in longhand themselves. Some cannot sign their name. Really—they print their signature!

In writing those columns in 2008, I interviewed several educators at both the college and grammar school level. There were several reasons why people in their teens and even in their twenties were unskilled at reading cursive documents—hand-held printing devices prime among them. (And isn’t it ironic we call a lot of those, “smart phones.”)

But again, those devices, like TV, are more symptomatic of the problem, rather than a reason why little Johnny and Janey can’t read a hand-written letter, let alone write one.

Look, I’ve used a computer for 25 years. I have texted, e-mailed, surfed the Web… But Lord knows, I can also read a hand-written note. So what’s changed?

Those educators that I mentioned I interviewed? Well, one question got two different answers, depending on who was being asked. Cursive handwriting was not taught in any of the public schools. But all Catholic grammar schools continue to teach the skill of handwriting.

And now, Catholic schools are closing everywhere.

I don’t have all the answers, but it seems to me that public schools have shown no inclination to improve their teaching methods—at least if the results they’ve presented over the last generation are any indication.

One middle-aged administrative executive I talked to about this didn’t see the problem as critical. “It’s (cursive writing and reading) an unnecessary skill today—like horseback riding,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Today’s educators don’t waste their time teaching our grammar school students how to ride a horse, so why should they teach cursive writing?”

They may not be teaching horseback riding, but they seem to be wasting their students’ time with a lot of other solid material associated with the horse.

Change Your Verb; Change Your Attitude

One of the most noteworthy concerns of the last 25 years has been the Health Care problem, especially with the aging population. I call it a problem, simply because I choose to use that word to describe this concern, and, being a writer, words are important to me.

And when it comes to health, there’s one little, four-letter word that really causes me to react.

I’ve had my own health care since I was 17 years old. That’s when I entered the Air Force. After my military service, I again acquired my own health care when I joined the Philadelphia Police Department.

People often told me how fortunate I was that the city of Philadelphia “gave” me health benefits while I was employed by the city.  Just like they “gave” me a salary, I suppose.

I didn’t think that my health benefits were something given; I was naive enough to believe I worked for them. That word—give—was the one that for a long time has drawn a reaction from me.

I first started to have trouble with the word “give” back in the late 1960s. People tend to forget (or ignore) what was happening back then, but I was a cop at the time, and many major US cites were literally set aflame during the upheaval of the 60s. By the time the decade was ending, Congress was holding televised hearings to ascertain just why so many of our major cities were the target of urban riots.

I especially remember two distinct citizens who testified in front of that panel.

One, a middle-aged naturalized American, had explained that when he first came to this country, there was no work to be had, so he took bricks and learned the brick-laying trade, starting a career that enabled him to support himself.

The other, a young urban resident who was born here, said that, “Nobody gave me any bricks to build with, so that’s why I’ve been throwing them.”

I was still in my 20s at the time, but I immediately saw the flaw in the latter’s reasoning, even though the Congressional panel sided with his viewpoint.  (No surprise there!)

There were two things wrong with his statement, as I saw it. First, if he had the bricks to throw, where did he get them? And why throw them? Why not build with them as the first man did?

Second, and most erroneous, I felt, was his dependency on the verb, “give”—that four-letter word that could “push my button,” as today’s cliché implies. And that young man used the word quite a bit, as I recall.

“Nobody gives me a chance.”

“Nobody gives me a job.”

“Nobody gives me respect.”

I personally would have advised him (and anyone with those oral inclinations) to jettison the word “give” from his everyday vocabulary as often as possible, because it was—and still is—seriously over-worked.

You see, I believe he was using the wrong verb. As young as I then was, I knew that nobody gives you a chance.

You take a chance.

Nobody gives you a job.

You win a job.

And most assuredly, nobody—no one—gives you respect.

That, you must earn.

Two Words to the Wise

I don’t make resolutions every January, but I hope for others to resolve their lives, specifically, to clean up their English. But not in a, “thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain” type of way. I just wish for certain over-used or ill-used language habits to cease.

Number one on my 2012 list should surprise no one. In fact, all people with an I.Q above double-digit levels should have this on their “clean-up-the-language” wish list: How about if we just use the word “awesome” correctly?

A woman called my house last month to setup an appointment. “Will you be home tomorrow at 10 a.m.?” she asked. I assured her I would be. “Awesome!” she replied.

Really? It inspired awe in this woman to know that I will be in my home? Now here are some things that are awesome: God is awesome, the birth of a child, sunset over the Grand Canyon…I can see all of these things inspiring awe.

But not a trip to the mall, as I once heard a teenage girl explain it. “You going to the mall?” she asked her friend. Her friend said she was, and so the first girl simply responded, “Awesome!”

This is just one more example of our penchant for language inflation. Like monetary inflation, over-used and ill-used words like awesome are just not worth what they once were.

And if homophobia is irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuals, then logically, heterophobia is irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against heterosexuals.

Just as all heterosexuals are not homophobic, all homosexuals are not heterophobic.

So, would heterophobics please stop trying to usurp the word, “marriage?” For thousands and thousands of years—millennia— marriage has meant the spiritual, social, physical, legal union of female with male, for the ultimate purpose of the perpetuation of the species.

If two people of the same sex want to join in a civil union, that’s between them, the state, and their principles. It’s therefore not my business; not my concern. Go in peace.

But please, get your own word!

Call it a civil union, call it a partnership, call it a krempfelder for all I care, but don’t steal a word that has meant something entirely different since before Moses walked the earth.

Abraham Lincoln once asked a man, “How many legs does your dog have?”

“Four,” answered the puzzled man.

“And if you were to call your dog’s tail a leg, how many legs would your dog then have,” Lincoln continued.

“Why then he’d have five,” the man answered, quite sure of himself.

“No,” Lincoln corrected him. “He would still only have four legs, because just calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”

Calling a union between two people of the same sex a marriage, doesn’t make it one.

Get your own word.

Hello, Newman! Welcome To the New Decade…Almost

And why seest thou the speck that is in thy brother’s eye, and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?

—Matthew 7:3

Admittedly, I’m one of those guys that tends to see the speck in the eye of my brother while missing the beam in my own eye. It’s one of my imperfections, and, as familiar as I am with the Sermon on the Mount, I too often yield to this temptation toward superiority.

I have to work on that.

But I’m just a weak, stupid man, and consequently spend a good deal of time fighting off temptation. The best way to fight temptation is to avoid it, but these are the times that try weak, stupid men’s souls.

I first ran head-on into one of these times at the close of 1999 when I was editing a children’s newspaper geared for grades kindergarten through sixth.

We had an editorial board consisting of educators and parents, and at one meeting I asked if the schools were teaching students that the year 2000 was not in fact the start of a new millennium, as was popularly being trumpeted, but rather the last year of both the 20th century and the second millennium.

I got a collective, silent, blank stare from the board. Not one educator knew that mathematically, the year 2001 was the start of a new century and a new millennium.

I was flabbergasted! (Do people still say flabbergasted? They should; it’s delightfully onomatopoeic.)

Our newspaper’s Production Department chief leaned over and whispered in my ear, “See, I told you that you were the only one who cared about this.”

Why wouldn’t teachers (and parents) want proper mathematics taught?

Maybe it was my years of arithmetic instruction at the hands of the IHM (Immaculate Heart of Mary) nuns that gave me an appreciation for sums, quotients, divisors, multipliers, ratios, proportions, and the elegance of this perfect science; but to find that today’s “educators” didn’t even know what the devil I was talking about…well, the Mighty Macs (as we lovingly referred to our IHM teachers) would have never stood for such ineptitude.

The 10 ensuing years (1999-2009) had temporarily dulled my memory of those days of unawareness, but that troublesome “9” on the end of the waning year back in 2009 stirred up those feelings once more, and I found myself again concentrating on that speck in my brother’s eye.

In December 2009, a popular TV sports-talk show commentator spent the morning asking fans to submit their choices for greatest athletic accomplishments of the decade, when a responder noted that we had one more year to go in this decade (he must have had the Mighty Macs).

“Oh, don’t be that guy!” the commentator demanded in a tantrum. “Don’t be that guy that’s always correcting people about the year starting with one, and not zero. You’re like Newman in Seinfeld.”

As I felt the old rage returning, I kept telling myself that sports was his forte, not math. I shouldn’t expect him to know that a decade is 10 complete years, not nine.

But, having followed sports all my life, I am acutely aware of how critical statistics are to sport fans. Did he think that 11 home runs equaled a dozen? Does first-and-10 mean you need nine yards for another first down? When you list the 10 best of anything, is the first one number zero and the last one number nine?

I suppose I can forgive him his computation trespass, for like me, he is just a weak, stupid man.

But…to mis-allude to a Seinfeld reference! That borders on profanity.

Newman, you see, was not the guy who corrected the error of believing that the new millennium began in 2000 (see episode 20, season eight, entitled, “The Millennium”). He was the guy that made the mistake by mis-scheduling his ‘Newmanium’ party.

It was Jerry Seinfeld himself who executed the counting coup d'état by explaining to the irrational postman that there was no year zero, hence the new millennium would begin in 2001.

Newman’s reaction was predictable—he seethed as he realized his mistake, noting that Seinfeld had bested him once again. Yes, even Newman, the representative TV sitcom loser of the 90s, immediately recognized his error. It needed only to be explained to him—mathematically.

What a shame a sportscaster can’t see the forest for the trees, and what a downright disgrace that educators can’t see the sum for the numbers.

So when newspapers and TV gossip shows parade out their ‘best of’ and ‘worst of’ the past decade at the end of 2019, I’ve decided to overlook those specks in their eyes and let them revel in their inaccuracies. I’ll just augment my reading with a little more Matthew 7.

And wonder if Newman had the Mighty Macs.