It’s one thing to complain about the economy – anyone can do that. But what should be done to fix it? Longtime readers know that I believe that our economic situation is a Managed Depression and that only a fundamental restructuring will end it. This is my Six Point Plan to do exactly that. It describes action by the Federal Government, which is to say that it is a political platform – meaning it is incomplete and taken from a certain perspective. If you have questions, please follow the links.
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Category Archives: People & Culture
All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
Challenge
At the end of a fun summer Saturday, just before Father’s Day, my son and I sat ourselves down and decided to see what was on teevee. There, on the Science Channel, was just what we were hoping for – the RoboGames with Grant Imahara of Mythbusters fame. It’s a competition of remote controlled devices that thrash, rip, and sometimes shoot fire at each other in a metal wrestling match running amok. It’s great stuff. There’s spectacle, destruction and competition – the battle to prove you are the best.
It’s enough to make my son get out his drawing notebook and talk about a father son trip to the Ax Man surplus store, too.
This may seem like a simple father-son moment of geekdom, but it’s much more than that. Competition is the best way to fire the imagination, engaging heart and arm and brain. It could even be an important tool of public policy.
Unwinnable Games
A slow drippy blah day isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s what greeted my son at the start of Summer Vacation this morning. “Miss school much?” I ask him, knowing the answer. This is the season of constant recess, but more importantly the recess where he can pick which friends to hang with. That makes a big difference.
All during the year he had one complaint when I saw him after school. “They were at it again,” the frustration bubbled out, “We spent most of recess arguing about the rules to Foursquare rather than playing it!” There are some kids in his class who are either wannabe bigshots or control freaks or … it’s a public school, they take everyone. And they can’t even organize a simple game of Foursquare (Boxball to me as a kid) without a huge argument over which silly rules like School Bus, Poison, Hold, and so on apply.
What’s funny about this is that adults are just kids who grew older, sometimes up.
School’s Not Yet Out
For those of us in Minnesota, there is little to talk about today except the extraordinary weather. From 102F yesterday to a predicted 48F tonight, we’re in the middle of a 54F drop in about 35 hours. This is what can happen in the middle of a vast continent.
The heat wave hit people as many different ways as we coped with a small emergency. The strangest effect was to highlight the awkward hot days at the end of the school year, the time when summer beckons to the kids before they can laze their way through the heat of the day. Oppressive heat made the classrooms warmer, recess drippier, and the slow progress of the day a bit heavier.
To me, it made the odd stillness at graduation time more pronounced. My kids are getting older and they are not little anymore. The day they move on is coming closer.
Little Things
Sixty seven years ago the Allied forces assaulted the beaches Normandy. Many small details blasted into those moments creating memories that defined the lives present – both survivors and casualties. Back home, my dad was only 10 years old, following the war in morning papers and newsreels. What he remembers most vividly from that day was the radio broadcast that evening when the Liberty Bell was tapped gently with a hammer, seven times, as if to spell out L-I-B-E-R-T-Y returning to the world. It was one of the few times in the last century the fragile and precious bell sounded. But that day it was needed.
It may seem like a small gesture, given the blood running heavy enough to crimson the surf on the shore of France. But it gave meaning to the people who were not there. Little things like this define the moments that make up the memory of a culture, a people with shared history and talk. Little things, small personal details, are what burn into our personal memories and make them real.
Little things are the stories that make up our lives.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 