Christmastide

Someone reminded me the other day that it is still Christmastide. My dad explained Christmastide to me when I asked him why we had a vacation from school in the middle of winter. Our school still called it Christmas Vacation then. He mentioned the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and told me that Christmastide lasts until January 5^th. I didn’t participate in Christmastide activities at church growing up, but I usually enjoyed it.

My sister and I usually spent our Christmas vacations staying with grandparents, cousins, or our mom. When I got old enough to take the bus on my own my cousin and I would knock around downtown St. Paul. I later explored the Twin Cities by bus on my own during Christmastide. I thought this was great fun. I saw places I didn’t get to see very often and had conversations with people I normally would not have: bus drivers, fellow passengers, waitresses, store clerks, panhandlers and librarians.

I think I spent most of the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day exploring the radio dial one year. I am grateful that I got to attend many different kinds of New Year’s Eve parties. My aunt and uncle usually had a big dinner on New Year’s Day. After I grew up and moved out of town I spent part of Christmastide traveling between Columbus and Minneapolis. I flew out to Phoenix and back for Christmas of 2001 – just a few months after 9/11.

These days I don’t get to knock around during Christmastide the way I used to. I have a job and a mortgage and a kid. This makes me grateful for social media and the Internet in general. I hope that I can give my son the same sense of wonder and adventure that the Christmastide helped me develop as I was growing up.

Merry Christmas, Suckers

We frequently hear or read that 1% of the population of the United States holds 95% of the wealth of the United States. I often hear the question, “How much do you need?” in discussions about the 1%. We may like to think of the 1% as greedy bloodsuckers, but we don’t make it very difficult for them to take our money. Christmas provides a good example.

The term “Black Friday” comes from accounting jargon. Before they had electronic spreadsheets, accountants recorded debts and losses in red ink and recorded gains and profits in black ink on paper ledgers. Historically, many retailers operated at a loss until the day after Thanksgiving, when we all started our Christmas shopping. So, the day after Thanksgiving became known as “Black Friday” because that is when the retailers finally started showing a profit – or started operating “in the black” - for the year. Imagine that. A store stays open all year long just so that we can spend money during the last month of the year.

We can count the family that owns Walmart among the 1%. Walmart has helped us to start a new Holiday tradition: recording our neighbors brawling with each other over merchandise on Thanksgiving Day and posting those videos on social media. We do not brawl with each other over bread because of hunger, we brawl with each other over a bunch of junk that we don’t need. We camp out in front of BestBuy in order to get a place in line so that we can buy electronic devices that we can’t figure out how to use. We trample each other to get shoes that bear the name of a retired professional basketball player. We pay huge premiums for clothing with huge logos of professional sports franchises so we can have the privilege of becoming mobile signs for private businesses.

We give our money to the 1% all year long at the gas pump. We drive around in outrageously large vehicles and drive them much faster than necessary. We think public transportation is for bums and bicyclists just slow us down. We urge each other to “support our troops,” never thinking that if we didn't demand so much gasoline the oil companies wouldn't have the power to put our boys and girls in harm’s way.

I could go on about other rackets such as makeup, TV and food. We pay more for branding and attractive packaging than we do for the actual food. We helped banks become too big to fail by accepting loans from them for more house than we need.

I have heard complaints about the commercialization of Christmas my whole life. My question to you this Christmas, Mr. and Mrs. 99%: How much do you need?

My Murphy Brown Moment

My son said something the other date that reminded me of “Murphy Brown,” a TV show that was popular in the 1980s and 90s. Candice Bergen played the title role. Murphy Brown was the hard-driven, forty-something anchor of a TV news program. The show had a running gag about how much Murphy hated Barry Manilow’s music.

After a few seasons the show became controversial because Murphy Brown decided she wanted to give birth to a child but did not want to bother with getting married. It was a big deal back then. Former Vice President Dan Quayle was widely mocked for criticizing Murphy Brown’s decision and not seeming to realize that he was talking about a fictional character. He tried to apologize by buying a blanket for the fictional baby.

The episode of Murphy Brown that comes to mind was one that took place when the baby was a few weeks old. It was three o’clock in the morning and Murphy could not get the baby to stop crying. She tried cooing to him, rocking him, singing to him. She tried to feed him and checked his diaper. Nothing worked. She turned on the radio to find some music the baby might like. As she was turning the dial, the baby stopped crying for a second but then continued crying as she kept going. She noticed that the baby had stopped crying and searched for the station that had caused the baby to stop crying. It turned out to be Barry Manilow singing “Copacabana.”  Murphy toughed it out. She let the song play, and even sang and danced along with it while holding the baby. It worked. The baby went to sleep and Murphy was able to go to bed.

My son is not a Barry Manilow fan - thank goodness - but he is interested in NASCAR. He told me the other day that he wants to go to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina on summer vacation. I understand that children learn better if they can follow their interests, but geez, NASCAR? I think auto racing is loud, obnoxious, dangerous, and pretty boring to watch unless one has a morbid desire to see crashes. I think NASCAR is a waste of resources and is responsible for much of the aggressive driving we see on our streets and highways. I don’t discourage the boy’s interest in the sport because I hope it will provide motivation for him to learn about mathematics and physics and chemistry.

I am surprised to find myself using Murphy Brown as a parent role model. She is a fictional character, but I know that there are many parents out there who allow themselves to be tortured by their children’s preferences in order to get them to sleep or to assist in their development.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. The boy is not asking to go to an actual race, after all. It will probably be 100 degrees in Charlotte next August, but maybe we will both learn something.  If we make it to Charlotte next summer, I will feel entitled to brag about being a good parent.

Drama Queens

“Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.” - Frank Zappa

The deal reached between Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend years ago. The conversation started out with him asking me about my disinterest in professional sports. He loved to watch NBA games. I told him sports are boring to watch unless I have a bet on the contest, and I want to avoid gambling. Besides, I told my friend, it’s a racket. All the games are fixed. I don’t see the difference between professional basketball and professional wrestling. To support this argument, I asked him how often the NBA championships go to seven games.

A championship series that goes to seven games generates more advertising revenue than a series that ends in four games. It also provides more opportunities for suckers to bet. So, they make sure that the series is dramatic. It has to come down to the wire. Maybe the seventh game of the NBA championship is a true athletic contest, but the first through sixth games are scripted. Similarly, the government shutdown and the last minute agreement on the debt ceiling were scripted. They were scripted for the same reason that professional sports matches are scripted: to generate advertising revenue.

Someone is keeping track of our Likes and Comments and Shares, as well as the online articles we read about our dysfunctional government. This allows them to target advertisements that will catch our attention. President Obama and members of the United States Congress are merely actors playing out their scripts to get us to agree or disagree with posts so that they will know how we think.

I heard that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is self funded. That is, the funding for the program was established when the act was passed into law. If that is true, the Republicans merely pandered to their constituents when they shut down the government in order to block funding for the program. However, the Democrats need to give more thought to reducing our debt. We are getting deeper into debt, and many people are calling the Republicans insane for trying to do something about it. We cannot continue to ignore this problem.

Smarter

I recently posted an essay on NPR on the Atheist group on Google+.  The essay called for civil discussion of theological beliefs, or lack thereof, between theists and atheists. The post generated more discussion than I expected. One person wrote that religions are making humans less intelligent. I don’t agree with that comment, but I can see why someone would think so. The Westboro Baptist Church is a very convenient example.

Religion made me more intelligent. I grew up with a lot of problems that extended into adulthood. I went through therapy and self-help groups. At the age of 30 I enrolled in a self-esteem class that helped me turn a corner. It helped a lot, but I still needed something else. I came upon the Parable of the Ungrateful Servant. This story liberated me from my resentment for people who had harmed me and got me on a path to correcting my own behavior. The self-esteem class prepared me to understand the parable. If there were no excuses for the bad things people had done to me, there was no excuse for the bad things I did to others.

Letting go of resentment and behaving responsibly are more intelligent than holding grudges and making others suffer from one’s anger, whether one is a theist or atheist.

The President's Remarks

I may get in trouble for saying it, but I don’t hear anyone else saying it, and someone has to say it:  The whole thing about the Zimmerman verdict is that many black men have been executed in America on much less evidence than the people of Florida had against George Zimmerman.  Not only that, but many black men and women have been lynched without benefit of trial for petty crimes or no crimes.  If President Obama cannot address this issue, he should be quiet about the Zimmerman verdict and Florida law.  The prosecution had a weak case against Mr. Zimmerman, but many people consider that a lame excuse for his acquittal.

It is unreasonable to expect any president to repair a criminal justice system that is rigged against black males.  After all, it took Dwight D. Eisenhower – the man who had commanded the largest army in history and who had won the most decisive battle in history – to send federal troops to a high school in Little Rock so that some kids could attend classes without being burned alive.  It took Lyndon B. Johnson – a lifelong political wheeler-dealer – to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

When President Eisenhower sent the troops to Central High School he was enforcing a court ruling.  President Johnson needed a law to enforce to ensure that all citizens had equal access to the voting booth.  It is unreasonable to expect a president to solve our racial problems because that is the role of Congress and of the courts.  It is also the responsibility of us as individual citizens.  The president’s job is to enforce the decisions of Congress and the courts. 

If we do not like the decisions our government makes, we need to vote for or against people who run for offices other than President of the United States.  Many of our citizens do not understand the Three Branches of Government and the system of Checks and Balances between them.  They think of our president as The Big Boss who has to stand for election every four years.  This ignorance contributes to a too-powerful presidency.  The way I learned it in my high school civics class is that Congress makes the laws, the courts interpret the laws, and the president enforces the laws.

I can understand why President Obama felt compelled to speak.  He is a legal scholar and probably felt pressured to display some leadership.  But, George Zimmerman is now a free man and a private citizen.  Unless the president can announce a plan to address imbalances in the criminal justice system, it is inappropriate for him to voice his personal opinion on a specific case.  He cannot introduce a bill in the Florida legislature to change the Stand Your Ground statute there, so he should not say anything about that, either.  It is up to the voters and legislators in Florida to decide if they want to change that statute.  President Obama’s legal opinions can wait until he leaves office.  I cannot see how it can be useful for any president to comment on legal issues of which he can do nothing about.  It may lead to unrealistic expectations about what he can do to solve problems such as racial profiling.

Mandate Parental Involvement

I believe that I comprehend arguments both for and against adoption of the Common Core state standards.  Those in favor want to make sure that the quality of education that a child receives does not depend on where the child lives.  Those opposed fear federalized indoctrination of children and that local school boards will have responsibility without authority.  What surprises me is that most of the opposition to the adoption was not organized until most of the states had already adopted the standards.  Some educators predict that implementation of the standards next year will reveal how poorly we are educating our children.

The unspoken issue in debates about Common Core, No Child Left Behind and other education reform programs is lack of parental involvement.  This is the crisis in education.  There is plenty of work to be done to improve the teaching done by teachers in the United States, but there is much more work to be done to convince parents that the education of their children is their responsibility.  We hire teachers to help us with the time-consuming aspects of this responsibility, not to abandon this responsibility to them.

We can help teachers spend more time teaching reading and math by teaching our children to not bully each other, teaching them how to not be victims of bullying and teaching them to not disrupt their classes.  School systems throughout our nation are doing what they can to prevent bullying and provide character education programs, but this means that they are allocating resources for these programs that could be used for art, physical education or science.  In order to be a successful teacher, a teacher must know more about classroom management than any academic subject.

There are parents who do more than make sure their children do not make it more difficult for other children to learn.  They read to their children, have their children read aloud, do drills with flash cards and answer questions about homework.  Many of them are single parents.  We do not have enough such parents.  We have plenty of parents who are more interested in reality TV than reality.  Communicating with teachers can be inconvenient for parents, but it must be done.  A parent who cannot tutor a child can find resources for tutoring.

Perhaps the most important thing a parent can do is to show their children by example that education is important.  This means looking at report cards, making sure that homework assignments are completed and attending conferences with teachers whenever possible.  A child is much more likely to take education seriously if a parent takes education seriously.  American history is full of examples of poor children who grew up to be successful because they took advantage of a free education in the public schools.

But how do we mandate parental involvement?  Doing so might be more effective than all the reforms of the education system itself.  We need incentives for parents who educate their children and intervention for parents who fail to put in any effort.  We could start with letters, numbers, shapes and colors.  Children who cannot identify these things on the first day of Kindergarten should be classified as either neglected or learning disabled and appropriate plans made on their behalf.  Parents who teach these things to their children could attend subsidized college classes or given some other incentive.

We must do something.  Our present school system operates on the outdated premise that parents are eager and grateful for an opportunity for their children to receive an education.  The present reality is that many apathetic students have apathetic parents.  They are failing classes and dropping out in vast numbers.  We cannot expect teachers and administrators to provide motivation for these students.  That is the responsibility of parents.  Our world has become so complex that ignoring a child’s education amounts to child abuse.  An uneducated adult is unemployable and vulnerable to many kinds of exploitation.  Parents who do not attend to their children’s education should be just as answerable to charges of child abuse as parents who withhold food or beat their children.