The Marshmellow Man Knows More Than You Might Think

All it takes is a few toothpicks and a bag of mini-marshmellows for a new character to spring to life. Most children easily spend their time inventing, not only characters, but narratives that put them to work.

When it comes to children and the way we educate them, as a writer, one of my pet peeves is the vocabulary test imposed on kids that rewards linear thinking and ignores creative interpretation and context.

Let me get specific. In a reprise of many previous experiences with all of my kids, my youngest got one of her 31 Vocab questions marked "wrong" yesterday.

Here was the question:

10. To recover is to
a. buy something new.
b. get well again.
c. get a new job.
d. move to a new home.

According to orthodoxy, the correct answer is, of course (b) but she chose (c).

Here is the context of this child's reality: Both of her parents have lost their jobs during the current recession. Anyone who listens to the news (which she does) hears the word "recovery" used much more often w.r.t. the national economy than to matters of illness.

If I were her teacher, rather than marking her down, I'd give her extra credit for perceiving that the meanings of words have a certain plasticity in English. A year ago, (b) might have been correct, but things have changed radically, and our use of language has, as well.

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Heart Spending

It's cold in San Francisco. Hot Mexican food. Cut flowers. Sick kids finally getting better. Catching up to my blogs. If you don't turn on the speed, they zoom away from you. Out of control.



During several recent visits to the suburbs, it was a different sort of pace. Many more trees than people, for one thing.



Coastal fog reaches there, only after clearing higher bluffs than guard San Francisco. As hilly as our city is in places, along Ocean Beach to the west, it is flat, so flat that the sands frequently close the Great Highway on windy days.



I've been vocal in my coverage of the attempt by CNN correspondent Victoria De La Cruz to organize support for her 27-year-old brother, Eric, who is dying from a rare heart condition. Unless he is cleared in time and receives a heart transplant, he doesn't have much time left.



Over at Sidewalk Images, our archive is approaching 580 photos.



The Japanese have a saying: "spending your heart." It means living and relating to others in such a way that you devote some of the finite capital in your heart on their behalf. It's generally has a positive sense.

Friday Night in Fog City

I've been racing around so much these past few weeks, it is getting difficult to regain my bearings; thus my blogging has been much more inconsistent than ever before. I promise to get better!

Here in America, a debate rages over national security. President Barack Obama gives a major speech on the importance of maintaining our values in the so-called "war on terror," a war, I should hasten to add, I have never bought into as either necessary nor wise. Not that I am soft on terrorists. It's just that I'd prefer a much quieter, highly-classified technique that might be classified as an "eye for an eye" strategy.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney was quick to the podium after Obama's speech to claim, once again, that his administration's decision to torture terror suspects has kept America "safe" since 9/11. Maybe. Maybe not.

The most public torture incidents occurred at a prison in Iraq, which was a war waged by the Bush administration that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that so-called "war on terror." Iraq, a secular Islamic state diametrically opposed to the al-Qaeda network that flew planes into buildings in New York and Washington, put on exhibit an amoral America so disgusting that even our closest allies around the world withdrew with a proper sense of digust.

Cheney hasn't faded away quietly. As V-P, he hid from sight, manipulating policies, including those that led to torture of foreign detainees. Since Obama won the election last November, Cheney is everywhere, spewing his hate to anyone who will listen. The MSM duly note his every word. He has a platform.

But history will not be kind to Dick Cheney. The U.S. is nothing without adhering to its core values, just as Obama wisely recognizes. If the evidence indicates that Cheney committed war crimes, he deserves to be prosecuted as such. I am quite sure that he is such a bully-coward that he will never hazard to leave these borders, lest a foreign prosecutor seize and detain him for all of the evil he has done.

On a related note, I listened to three travel writers talk on our local public radio station today about what it is like to be an American traveling overseas in the Obama era. There is apparently such an insatiable desire on the part of foreigners to talk about Obama, and how America elected him, that even the best-informed American tourist can feel overwhelmed.

Cynics, ultra-conservatives, and idiots generally will write this off as the naivete of anyone not an American. But as one who's traveled much of the world for decades, I view the American middle class as the most naive, insulated group of people in the world.

Get out of your shell! Travel! Meet people! Interact! If you do this with an open mind, you'll join the global community of humanity and leave parochial America behind forever.

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Letter from the North Country

Portland, OR

The plane had to make two passes, never a fun experience, but finally we landed up here earlier this evening.

There's something about grandchildren. It is visceral. You've already raised one of their parents; doing everything in your power to protect her, then give her to the world, and hope the world appreciates her perfection.

Then, she has a son, and in your (now aged) eyes, he is a creature of the rarest beauty. In this case, a little boy so charming, energetic, smart and athletic that by the age of two years and four months, you're ready to declare him a future President of the U.S. (after he is a Hall of Famer in at least three sports, fluent in ten languages, and inventor of several products that help avert global climate change.)

Such is the love of a Grandpa for his Grandson.

***

Parenting is, of course, much more luck and art than science, but there is a growing body of useful research to help guide those of us engaged in this work. And parenting truly is work, however you define it. I don't know of any aspect of living that causes more stress.

This in no way diminishes the challenges facing those among us who, by choice or fate, do not turn out to be parents. This is still widely considered an unnatural outcome for a human being, but many people are childless.

These people, in fact, are among the few who may have the resources, by virtue of their lack of the obligation by blood to take care of their own youngsters, to help all of us take care of all the children in our society who need help tonight.

We have some deeply flawed and arbitrary social policies that virtually guarantee that certain people's lives will turn out to be much less successful than they might have been.

The problem for those of us who have our own children to support is that the vast majority of us never get far ahead enough of the financial curve to donate resources, work, talent to those kids who are in fact far more endangered by the system's cruel logic than are our own.

This contradiction is not lost on many parents. We do not not see the need out there. It's just that until we take care of our own, which is an increasingly difficult proposition in a world that reduces our prospects to chasing scarcities, how can we responsibly devote ourselves to helping all of those other kids -- the ones without adequate family support?

We see but we cannot help them.

A well-employed adult without others dependent on them, however, has the required extra bandwith to do so. That is one way this world could become a better place, the purported goal of so many of us. I mean no offense to anyone by this post. It's just a suggestion for the random 40-50-60 something who is settling in and watching movies with their friends at night rather than asking whether they just might be able to help an endangered child down the block learn better math skills.

We have more than a few of these folks in San Francisco, BTW.

Oh yes, President Obama would be proud of you if you gave these thoughts more than a dismissive wave...

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No Country for Old Women

San Mateo

Erratic.

This is a stage of life I dread. Normally, I am as reliable as an old car. Turn the key and I fire up, ready to serve.

But lately, more and more, I notice that I am forgetful, inconsistent, unreliable (only in my personal life, Thank God, not in my professional world -- yet.)

As an example, consider this blog. I could have sworn I posted to it yesterday, and also to our sister site, Sidewalk Images, but it turns out that is not true. And swearing is not going to help the matter.

Long-time readers know I'm always going to be here for them, right? Well, almost always, it now needs to be admitted.

I remember my ex-girlfriend explaining to me one of the reasons she didn't want to stay involved: "Because I don't want to have to take care of you as you grow old." It sounds kinda cruel, but she was just being honest.

Who the hell would want to take care of an old guy?

Today, for some reasons the muscles in my thighs hurt. I have always had extremely strong legs. When I was young, and slender, I could run extremely fast. Nowadays, overweight, I cannot even run a few steps.

Lately, devoid of any exercise (always working or always parenting), I have done nothing to make my legs hurt. Maybe they are hurting because they are angry that I have done nothing to make them hurt.

Maybe they are calling out to be tested, while they still matter.

Who knows, I certainly don't. I've never paid my body much attention at all. It is what it is; it does what it does; more often than not it's gotten me into trouble in this world, whereas my mind has been much more reliably productive.

I guess this is the aging process. Still, I began this post kvetching about becoming forgetful and look where that led me, I am now complaining about my legs. That's old people for you: inconsistent, but always complaining about something.