Love and Death

I just read Gort's latest posting and this immediately came to mind...




...and if that doesn't work for you, how about this then?

Road Apples, #58

In the "Duh" Department...Representative Yudichak is proposing a bill that would require state legislators to actually provide receipts for their expense reimbursement. Scranton Times article link HERE. Basically this means that at least some legislators are starting to realize that the gravy train has left the station and will not be coming back. The shame of it all! These folks may actually have to abide by the same common-sense rules that apply to us plebeians. How will they ever survive?

Self-Regulation...Speaking of receipt-less reimbursement, what do the "kids for cash", "midnight pay raise" and "various sundry financial services sector scandals" all have in common? Well among other things, all point to the abject failure that happens every time we allow any group to engage in self-regulation. It doesn't work because it works against human nature. Maybe one day we will learn...

Layoff...I read that a friend of mine lost a job that they had for over twenty years. That's sad stuff. When I started with my current employer years and years ago, a man by the name of Augie Urgola (yes, that is his real name) told me something simple but pretty profound: one of the things that companies do is employ people. His point was, simply put, that the job of a business isn't jut to make money, but to perform this socially redeeming thing called providing employment. Many companies forget this...certainly mine does, especially when you hear that certain executives are in India evaluating off-shoring opportunities. Let's hope that tree bears no fruit.

Shirts...While not profound or noteworthy I am never the less going to note that today I am actually wearing a short-sleeve shirt. Ah, the glory that is Spring! I'm not yet at the point where I need to get my warmer weather clothes down from the attic, but that could be a week or so away.

Big Purchases...stress me out. Growing up in very modest circumstances, I am always worried about money, despite the fact that I am relatively successful with my career. How successful? Successful enough that I what I pay federal income tax is equal to what I got as a starting salary out of college (note: that first job paid horribly). Anyway, big purchases always stress me out, and I have a big purchase on the horizon, namely that I need to start looking for another car. Having another daughter starting college next fall, we will need another vehicle, so my plan is to donate my PT Cruiser to my oldest daughter and have her car then go to my middle daughter. This means that I get another vehicle for myself. I'll probably put some kind of analytical tool together to better identify what I'm looking for, but I do have a few things in mind:

...uber reliable
...good on gas
...a sun roof

More to come on this. It will stress me out though.

Rain

In theory we will be getting some rain by the end of this week...yes, good ole' fashioned rain. No snow, no sleet, no icy crap falling from the sky. Only rain. Reminds me of a song...

Parenting

(Easter, around 2001)

I've been thinking a lot about parenting lately. Well the previous statement is something of a misnomer, as I think about parenting all the time, but for some reason I've been thinking more about it of late. Maybe it's because my oldest daughter is on Spring Break, maybe it's because of the George Will column I posted the other day, maybe it's because of this bizarre combination of hundreds of things floating in my head at any given time. Anyway, it's been "top of mind" lately, so maybe I need to do a brain dump to move it a little bit lower in my cranial pecking order.

What do I think is the simple most important thing a parent can do for their children? I actually have an answer for that: the single most important thing a parent can do for their children is to teach them to be independent human beings. Now others might disagree with me, and maybe in their mind things like...

...help them be happy
...help them have high self-esteem
...give them the things that they didn't have as children
...teach them to have faith
...etc.

...may be more important, but not to me.

Now I'm not including the things that all parents must do, such as things like feed them, shelter them, keep them physically safe, etc. Any parent who doesn't do those things shouldn't be a parent.

So, why teach them to be independent? For me part of the answer lies in the fact that I have three (beautiful) daughters. I've seen how society objectifies women, and as a former young man myself I've probably participated in that objectification. When you allow yourself to be treated like an object you inevitably trade away some of your humanity. "Property" has a tough time doing some of the other things in life...such as have strong faith, have high self-esteem...so unless a child can move beyond the notion that they have to be "owned" by someone (or something) else, then it seems to me that nothing else is really all that possible.

I never want my children to have to rely on anyone else when they are adults, no matter how loving the intent. True love, at least to me, is always a voluntary act. I want my children to be able to have lives full of possibilities, not full of shackles to a person (or institution). It's that voluntary choice...that decision made out of a positive choice not negative requirement...that seems to me to be at the heart of living. It's all about free will, which could very well be the greatest gift given to us by God (if you chose to believe in such concepts).

So what I try and do as a parent is to teach the necessity of independence, with the thought that the other things in life come with along with it. That drives discussions about everything from current events/politics (where I don't believe that anyone should be relying on the government) to things like college majors. Now I don't know how successful I've been, but I heard a positive sign when my oldest daughter Katrina made a comment about how in college you should be choosing "a career, not a major". One small victory to celebrate.

Ray Davies

I'm not a really big Kinks fan, but I attended the Ray Davies concert last night at the Scranton Cultural Center and I absolutely have no regrets. Why did I go if I'm not a big fan? Simple: Ray Davies is right up there with Paul McCartney, Pete Townsend, Brian Wilson, and a select group of others who fall into the "living musical genius" category. This is the guy who gave us "Lola" and other songs from the British Invasion that became part of the lexicon of our popular culture.

Ray Davies sounded simply outstanding. The voice was in great shape, and his playing (and that of the supporting act & his side guitarist) was outstanding. Even if you didn't know all of the songs...which I didn't...you could still appreciate how well they were performed. In an era were most of the Top 10 consists of "artists" who don't write their own material, don't play a damn thing and use electronics to enhance their vocals, this performance was an example of what popular music was should be.

The only down side? There were probably a few people in the audience who a couple of sheets to the wind, but so be it. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and no one got hurt.

This concert, along with the show David Gates show I attended a few years back, are probably the closest I will ever come to hearing real musical genius live (I missed the Brian Wilson concert last year). Well worth the investment, even if he didn't play Do It Again (my favorite Kinks song).

In the "Great Moments in Bad Timing" Department...

...we have this story that appeared in yesterday's edition of the Scranton Times.

Veon defense may call Eachus, Wansacz in corruption probe

I am sure that Representative Wansacz is somewhat "less than thrilled" with both the headline and the actual possibility. This comes on the heals of the disclosure that both Mr Eachus & Mr Wansacz have been using their Per Diem pay...you know, that "no proof of expenses required" reimbursement for their travel expenses...to make mortgage payments for Harrisburg investment properties. Others (such as NEPArtisan) have talked about that one already, so I'll just keep it simple: it's another example of the incredible arrogance that permeates the Pennsylvania Legislature like the smell of Curry in an Indian restaurant.

The actual race to replace Senator Mellow is getting interesting. On the Democratic side you have three major candidates...

...endorsed candidate Joseph Corcoran who is nothing more than a tired old politician who seems to believe that he is entitled to this position as as result of his stellar service as county commissioner. How stellar his performance? It was sooooo stellar that he actually lost to Bob Cordaro. He also gave us Randy Castellani, and has been an active supporter of current county controller Ken McDowell, someone who managed to lose millions of dollars while running the Single Tax Office. I could go on, but the point is made. Scratch this one.

...Bob Mellow's mini-me, Representative Wansacz, who, as noted above, is facing a whole slew of bad publicity coming from a slew of bad decisions. Yes, it is WRONG to accept the Per Diem money as currently constructed. Sure it is allowed, but slavery was allowed in America at one time as well, and neither are right. That WRONG is compounded by using the money as a way to buy a personal investment (namely his Harrisburg property). He might as well use the money to buy shares in publicly traded company. The man seems to have developed a bad case of "Legislative Entitlement" disease...this is the same thing that inflicted Bob Mellow...something like 29 years ago. Oh, and as noted above, there is a fighting chance that Rep. Wansacz may called to be testified and basically say "yeah, we all did it" in the Veon trial. That will be priceless.

...Chris Doherty, who I would prefer stay as mayor of Scranton. Someone has to be the counter to Janet Evans & her "I can reduce taxes by increasing unionized city employee costs" mentality. Yes, Mrs Evans has a few good ideas, but it's pretty clear that she is squarely in the pocket of the police and firemen unions. Chris Doherty may have taken things a bit to far in failing to reach reasonable agreements with the police and firemen (make no mistake about it, both groups DESERVE reasonable cost of living raises) but Janet Evans is just as extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum. If Doherty wins, Scranton City Council would most likely appoint Janet Evans as mayor, which would be a disaster. Lastly, there is a credible question of physical capability that needs to be asked: If Janet Evans is disabled to the point of no longer being able to teach English at Scranton High School, how could be be physically capable of handling the demands of being mayor?


The above makes me think that the best choice may be in one of the other candidates, such as Chris Phillips. Mr Phillips has two things going for him as far as I am concerned:

1. He has pissed off a lot of people, including many numerous anonymous Internet message board posters. That's a good thing. On the other end of the spectrum I am sure that Chris Doherty isn't much of a fan. In my book, if you are pissing people off at either end that generally means that you are actually doing something right.

2. He can disagree while still being respectful. For example, he fought the ill-conceived sale of the South Side Complex in Scranton for years, but unlike some others, he did it in a way that was respectful and grounded in logic and reasoning.



I know there are others running, but I have to be honest in that I don't know who they are, so no offense to anyone who I neglected to mention. They will just have to do without the publicity generated by the two people that actually read this stuff.

Happy Saturday!

George Will: How to ruin a child

While I disagree with him about three-quarters of the time, I never the less like reading George Will's columns. That's the beauty I suppose of sitting where I do politically and socially: I am not required to automatically believe whatever anyone writes, simple because it is from a "conservative" or from a "progressive".

Anyway, I often read Will's columns when I am exercising, and his column yesterday was one of the about 30% that I actually agree with, so I wanted to share it here. The column basically speaks to a phrase I recall hearing a long time ago: when everyone wins, really no one wins. That's especially true with children. Yes, I have always wanted my three daughters to feel good about themselves, to be successful, to not be harmed. However in life you don't always feel good about yourself...you aren't always successful...and sometimes you get harmed. Life is the ultimate contact sport. The gut reaction of a parent is to shelter children from these things but we need to reach beyond that, as I think it is the sacred duty of every parent to teach their children how to deal with the realities of living in a world where not everyone wins all the time.

How to ruin a child

By George Will

Memo to that Massachusetts school where children in physical education classes jump rope without using ropes: Get some ropes. And you — you are about 85 percent of all parents — who are constantly telling your children how intelligent they are: Do your children a favor and pipe down.

These are nuggets from "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It is another book to torment modern parents who are determined to bring to bear on their offspring the accumulated science of child-rearing. Modern parents want to nurture so skillfully that Mother Nature will gasp in admiration at the marvels their parenting produces from the soft clay of children.

Those Massachusetts children are jumping rope without ropes because of a self-esteem obsession. The assumption is that thinking highly of oneself is a prerequisite for high achievement. That is why some children's soccer teams stopped counting goals (think of the damaged psyches of children who rarely scored) and shower trophies on everyone. No child at that Massachusetts school suffers damaged self-esteem by tripping on the jump rope.

But the theory that praise, self-esteem and accomplishment increase in tandem is false. Children incessantly praised for their intelligence (often by parents who are really praising themselves) often underrate the importance of effort. Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties. Also, Bronson and Merryman say that overpraised children are prone to cheating because they have not developed strategies for coping with failure.

"We put our children in high-pressure environments," Bronson and Merryman write, "seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments." But children excessively praised for their intelligence become risk-adverse in order to preserve their reputations. Instead, Bronson and Merryman say, praise effort ("I like how you keep trying"): It is a variable children can control.

They often cannot control cars. In 1999, a Johns Hopkins University study found that some school districts that abolished driver's education courses experienced a 27 percent decrease in auto accidents among 16- and 17-year-olds. Odd.

Not really. Bronson and Merryman say driver's ed teaches the rules of the road and mechanics of driving, but teenagers are in fatal crashes at twice the rate of other drivers because of poor decisions, not poor skills. The wiring in the frontal lobe of the teenage brain is not fully formed. Driver's ed courses make getting a license easy, thereby increasing the supply of young drivers who actually have holes in their heads.

Their unfinished heads should spend more time on pillows. Only 5 percent of high school seniors get eight hours of sleep a night. Children get a hour less than they did 30 years ago, which subtracts IQ points and adds body weight.

Until age 21, the circuitry of a child's brain is being completed. Bronson and Merryman report research on grade schoolers showing that "the performance gap caused by an hour's difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader." In high school, there is a steep decline in sleep hours, and a striking correlation of sleep and grades.

Tired children have trouble retaining learning "because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory. . . . The more you learned during the day, the more you need to sleep that night."

The school day starts too early because that is convenient for parents and teachers. Awakened at dawn, teenage brains are still releasing melatonin, which makes them sleepy. This is one reason young adults are responsible for half of the 100,000 annual "fall asleep" automobile crashes. When Edina, Minn., changed its high school start from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., math/verbal SAT scores rose substantially.

Furthermore, sleep loss increases the hormone that stimulates hunger and decreases the one that suppresses appetite. Hence the correlation between less sleep and more obesity.

Bronson and Merryman slay a slew of myths. But perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people. Only recently — about five minutes ago, relative to the long-running human comedy — have parents been driving themselves to distraction by taking too seriously the idea that "as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." Twigs are not limitlessly bendable; trees will be what they will be.

Ciav & Con

The "Juvie Brothers" (as Gort refers to them) are in full legal defense mode, doing their best to clog up the wheels of justice, using every single legal trick in the book to extend, elude, vacillate, and generally avoid having to face the music for jailing kids to jail for money. You can read some of the details at Big Dan's blog.

To borrow a line from Gunnery Sgt Hartmann, they are "...not even human f&^king beings". I know, I know, innocent until proven guilty, but there is already enough evidence out there to deny them license to be in the same species as the rest of us. Case in point: the bird sentencing.

Let's hope justice is eventually served here and they end up losing the same freedom that they denied so many children. Yes, children. Sense the rage here? It's one thing to screw with adults for money...that's wrong, illegal and people go to jail for that...but adults are (in theory) at least capable of defending themselves. These two decided to prey on those who were unable to defend themselves, and they did it in this aquarium environment of intimidation that they themselves created at the Luzerne County courthouse.

Posting/Blogging Anonymously

Someone asked me the other day why I post/blog under my (actual) name instead of a pseudonym, and never being one to miss an opportunity to write, I thought I'd respond here. Now I've probably already written about this before, but who cares? Hell this is more about entertaining me anyway.

Now I do not have anything against anyone who decides to blog or post anonymously, with one small caveat: if you are going to be critical, then do it above board. For example, I said some fairly critical things about former Lackawanna County Commissioner Joseph Corcoran this morning, but it wasn't anything that I am ashamed of writing. Anyone...including Mr Corcoran and/or his supporters...is free to dispute what I wrote in the blog, and if I'm wrong I will "man up" and admit it. Being overly critical while truly posting anonymously seems to be to be a cheap shot, the equivalent of saying "I'll bash you but I'm afraid that you will fight back, so I'll just hide behind this fake name". To me that seems cowardly.

Are there exceptions? Sure, this isn't higher-level mathematics we are dealing with here, so of course there are exceptions to what I noted above. For example, if you are responding to a perceived injustice but that response makes you reasonably believe that you or yours could be exposed to harassment or harm, then I don't see the harm in writing anonymously. I think though that the range of motion associated with the above situation would be limited: for example, if you are writing about the town bully and his/her propensity to intimidate others, I would expect that the scope of the anonymous posting would be limited to the bullying actions of the individual in question.

Of course if someone wants to wax the philosophical without being personally critical of anyone, then who really cares if they are identified by name? Well who cares other than the author him/herself. This is where I'd put the postings of The Rockin Apologist. For example, the Apologist's criticisms of "Bridget Mary's Blog" are not directed at Bridget Mary the person, but rather the ideas expressed in Bridget Mary's blog. There is a big difference...it's the difference between "I disagree with your ideas" and "I think you an in-bred idiot who practices bad hygiene". Of course if it were me saying that Bridget Mary was wrong I'd still say it under my own name, but that's just a personal decision I've made.

Speaking of me, I have one other driver at work here that is a bit more personal in nature: for whatever reason I always felt that in my youth I was afraid of my own voice. I know, that sounds very haughty, but it's the best way I can describe this notion that I lacked any real confidence in myself or my ideas. I'm not claiming now that I am a superman of confidence, but I am claiming to basically care an awful lot less about what others think. That's another one of the benefits that comes with age, namely that it's more important to be comfortable in your own skin than it is to be worried about how others perceive you. People can read this and be entertained, bored, or driven to the brink of insanity by virtue of how stupid it appears to them and it's all okay with me. To quote that great philosopher Ricky Nelson:

"But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself"

That seems pretty reasonable to me.

IRRELEVANT

As forecast by NEPArtisan and others, the Lackawanna County Democratic Party back-room bosses have endorsed former Commissioner Joseph Corcoran for the seat of retiring State Senator Robert Mellow. Scranton Times article here.

I repeat, irrelevant.

This is the same Joseph Corcoran who managed to lose to Bob Cordaro (ponder that one for a few minutes...). This is the same Joseph Corcoran who never met a project he didn't want to fund with OUR money. This is the same Joseph Corcoran who, to the best of my knowledge, really doesn't have much to his resume other than "former Commissioner". This is the same Joseph Corcoran who engineered the selection of Randy Castellanni as his running mate, a nice guy who was grossly unqualified for the job as Commissioner (or just about anything else in government service, other than Dispatcher).

Do tell me, just what in the hell is the message supposed to be by the selection of Joseph Corcoran? I guess it's supposed to be that party loyalty means more than actual qualification. Perhaps it means that the back-room boys want to make sure that the seat firmly stays in the "old white guy" column. Maybe it means that Joseph Corcoran is skilled at mass hypnosis. Do any of these things equate to a more effective senator for NEPA? Of course not. If anything, the selection means that the Democratic Party Committee is so out of touch with reality that they actually think voters want "more of the same" (all be it without seniority). We've had 30+ years of our state senator engaging in self-service; it's time for someone who is interested in actual public service.

Oh, and just to add an almost evil coda to this whole sad story, the back-room boys also endorsed Ken Smith for re-election. This is a guy who is more well known for his inability to meet personal financial obligations than actual legislative achievement.

So congratulations to the Lackawanna County Democratic Committee:
You have managed to live down to the lowest possible expectations that people had for you.