Gratitude on Thanksgiving Day.

I am not sure if sentimentality is a natural side effect of middle age, but I have found myself being easily choked up by various things. People send schmaltzy emails about God, country, babies, milestones, friendship, and all manner of other topics that I would generally dismiss, and I find myself reading them closely. Morevoer, I saw a touching commercial the other day and had to feign an allergy attack to disguise my embarassing reaction.

I read about the young Medal of Honor winner, SSgt. Salvatore Giunta, and I never made it to the end of the story. I am genuinely awed that we have young people so committed to their causes and their comrades that they will risk their own life to adhere to abstract principles and values. In fact, when I incline toward pessimism about the future of our country, I am psychologically galvanized by the stories of our soldiers, missionaries, and commmunity volunteers.

With that in mind, I turn my thoughts to this Thursday, November 25th, 2010.

I am grateful. Oh sure, I am also still concerned, worried, and often distressed, but I cannot deny my sense of gratitude any more than I can deny my loss of composure when I hear "Butterfly Kisses" on the emo radio station. Heaven help me when the "Christmas Shoes" ditty starts playing in a week or two.

The sense of gratitude is fueled by my realization that, despite all the baggage that is part of life, the most important elements are things I can count on: I love my wife and my kids, and my job still provides me with a chance to make a difference. I am healthy, appreciated by the people that matter, and I still find reasons to summon up an old-fashiioned belly laugh on a regular basis.

Lest i undermine a persona that took a lifetime to cultivate and grow to maturuty, let me declare that I still maintain the capacity to morph into a grumpy old man at a moment's notice. My default psycholigical state is still comprehensive dissatisfaction. The difference is that I think I hhave reached a point where the funks don't last so long, though they still tend to run as deep. (Maybe the next stage of evolution will diminish that tendency?)

So as Thanksgiving approaches, I am surprised to find myself focusing on the good things, not at the absolute exclusion of the sources of angst, but with a conscious conviction that these sources of gratitude, gratefulness - dare I say it, (Happiness?) are paramount. I think the holiday's preeminent invocation is to find the elements which are so critical, and to place the negative forces in solitary confinement for a few days.

I know it's trite, cliche`, and maudlin, but just suppose that you can armwrestle the forces that compromise your sense of hopefulness, and take a concerted look at the roses that are just waiting for your nose to smell.

Happy Thanksgiving, I say, and I don't know where this whole thing came from. I think I need to apologize.

Patience

My great aunt used to like to say that patience is a virtue. I always assumed then that the opposite, impatience, would be a sin. Ironically, I have decided lately that both can be virtues or sins, and that the context is the determining factor in every case.

Naturally, to be inclined to exhibit patience, generally speaking, is a good thing and probably a virtue. Yet I am not so sure that exhibiitng patience when it's not warranted isn't akin to maintining silence when the circumstances scream for you to speak up.

Helping to crystallize this conclusion is a story told by my son's girlfriend. While conducting a tour at the zoo, she encountered a bratty kid and an ineffective parent. Excited, the boy in the scene was just a bit out of control. The parent told the 8 or so year old to stop his outbursts. The child retorted by telling the father to stop his outbursts, and added to the reaction by punching his father repeatedly in the midsection.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Nothing, really," she said. "We all just had to wait for the kid to calm down."

The girl exhibited great patience, as the tantrum continued for some five to ten minutes. I am convinced, however, that her patience wasn't a virtue. I suppose I can't ask her to reprimand the parent, though I might have, but she could have politely requested that the father leave the tour so all the other patrons could move along.

I know she, the guide, is a young adult, and that confronting adults can be difficult, but she needs to be trained to handle such things. Furthermore, I think the implicit patience on the part of the other patrons, some of whom must have been adults, is clearly a sin. Why couldn't they have spoken up on behalf of all the people involved?

Perhaps the reader's immediate reaction is disagreement on the grounds that the innocent bystander has no business telling anyone how to parent, but I find this argument silly and unsupportable. The tour was the business of all the parties, and this one pair was compromising everyone else's time and creating a distresing environment.

The larger point to be made is that I am not content with having one of the imposed-upon patrons speak up to address the annoying scene; I think they all should speak up! An individual who speaks up may run the risk of having to deal with an embarassed, offended parent. That same person, who might create an even larger scene when challenged, is more than likely not going to choose to pick a fight with the whole crowd.

An anti-bullying program I have been reading about is centered on teaching young people to utilize this group approach. The plan is to have the mob work for right and good by teaching them how to demand that that bully stop bullying for fear of having the group turn against him. Of course, the program says that others should show support for the victim, rather than trying to shout the bully down. But i think the reason the tactic can and does work is that the crowd, by standing up for the victim, is really ostracising the bully.

Think about it. The bully gains his power by the silence of the crowd, and increases his power if members of the crowd laugh, join in, or otherwise seem to support the power play.

As noted earlier, silence isn't always golden, especially when it serves as an avenue for someone to infer support for an action. Likewise, patience in not a virtue when waiting promises not to lead to a more favorable set of circumstances. In fact, being patient in some cases is really just cowardice. The same is true with impotent silence.

Put the two main themes together and we happen upon a great piece of advice: speak up now!

Student Empowerment ?

I will do my best to make this as brief, as clear, and as applicable as possible.

A fine teacher I know was complaining about a troublesome student who chronically teeters on the edge of insubordination and disrepect. Often, the princess in question will try to camouflage a personal oversight or error of omission on her part by claiming that the teacher had failed to adequately explain, notify, or remind the student of her responsiblities.
"You should have reminded us," she will say - or - "if you had taught that better I would have understood."

In each case, the student is using a simple dynamic: blame someone else for her error.

I say, ignore the tendency to respond by being affronted by the disrespect lurking in the shadows, or even the defiance standing at full attention. Address the challenge head on.

"Well Susie," the teacher might say, "Let's test the theory."

"Class, I need you to answer the next few questions as honestly as possible? How many of you remember how I notified you that the homework/project/assignement was due today?"

"You told us Wednesday in class."
"It's on the board right behind you."
"Don't you have all the assignments posted on your web page?"
"I put it in my agenda book."

"Question two: Does anyone have an idea for how I might make it easier for everyone to remember their due dates and assignment schedule?"

"You could put in on a calendar."
"You could tell us to write it in our agenda books."
"You could send us an email or a text."

Now, of course, most teachers are not going to want to send out assignment alerts via email or text, but you get the idea.

I think early in the school year, teachers should review a small number of rules for classroom engagement. Something like this:

1. Bring required materials.
2. Copy assignments from the board during class warm-up or closure period.
3. Adrress absolutely everyone respectfully while in the confines of the classroom, including the teacher.

Then ask the students what other rules they think should be followed, and how they should be enforced. The funny thing is that invariably, the students know how school should work, and their mechanism for enforcement and penalties for irresponsibility are often mre severe than the teacher can or will enforce.

Also important: the class need not adopt all the suggestions. The teacher can simply explain where the suggestions are inappropriate, and offer alternatives to the unsupportable ideas. In the end, the teacher is still the authority for which rules and expectations will stand.

The value of the exercise at the early part of a year or semester is that academic indifference - or even the disrespectful comments noted in the intro. - can be bluntly and directly addressed when they occur.

The student who claims that notification was absent or ineffective cannot deny that notification methods have been common practice throughout the year. [Important warning here: in those instances where circumstances have prevented the teacher from notifying according to the plan, the teacher will need to make allowances. For instance, for an assignment that didn't make it to the teacher web page, or wasn't posted on the board, the teacher must give the student to the end of the day, or even allow for the item to be submitted a day late without penalty depending on the circumstances.]

For the comment critical of the teacher's instructional method, the student empowerment scheme can also help. Most teachers have systems in place for clarifying messages, instructions, or requirements. Make certain that remediation opportuities are also posted. "See me after school. Send me an email. Post on the discussion board. I will take questions during the last five minutes while the class reads independently, sets up the homework assignment, or reviews notes."

I know of a teacher who has a suggestion box of sorts. Students drop 3x5 cards with their question in a box at the door and the teacher posts the answers on the teacher web page.

One major point is this: no part of the learning process should be a guessing game. Students are going to screw up and neglect duties of one kind or another. The test of their commitment needn't be whether they copied the assignemnt, but whether they turned it in at the appointed time. Therefore, set up study buddies, or employ some of the ideas suggested in here. Make access to the necessary information routine, clear, and easy. The only excuses for not submitting something should be that the dog really did eat it, or the student didn't do his job. The student should never be able to claim that he couldn't overcome a momentary error or oversight.

After all, the measure of teacher success is student achievement. Teachers know that students are often lazy, indifferent, irresponsible, and careless. Why let expected student responsibility challenges be the reason for teacher failure. A student failure is a teacher failure, and teacher's want to have as few of those as possible.

The ultimate success occurs when the teacher can say, "Susie gets little parental support, does not engage consistently in her learning, socializes too frequently, and exhibits some definite knowledge and skill gaps, but she earned a legitimate B in my class."

Good job teach!

Whose Job is it Anyway?

I have never been one to reject a task simply because it wasn't my job. In fact, I have sometimes gotten myself into trouble because I put my two cents worth where it didn't belong. After all, that propensity for overstepping my bounds is the reason for the title of this blog.

I am taking this a step farther now though, because I am sick and tired, tired and sick, of people who won't do their own jobs, let alone tackle one that cries out for an owner.

I will be hard-pressed to provide an example without revealing the object of my ire, so I will tackjle this a bit differently. I know people who will refrain from responding to an email because their delay will force another to co-opt the task. Knock it off, I say. The email was sent to you because you are the one, or one of the ones, who can further a process, approve a decision, or stop a mistake from happening. Do your job!

Directly related to this is the person who deliberately does only half of his job, thereby shielding himself from full responsibility. Again, providing specific instances promises to create more problems than its worth, so generalities will have to do. And to be honest, specifics aren't really necessary. The delay-ers and half-hearted dally-ers now who they are, and so do you.

Nothing is worse than being the next person in the information chain, knowing that the adjacent link is dawdling, waiting for someone to snatch responsibility away. I suppose that is an offshoot of the other point of complaint, the CYA colleague. You know the guy, his first and primary concern is making certain that he didn't make the mistake. These poeple see the potential for blame in every action they take, and some are rendered catatonic by the prospect of being held accountable for --- anything.

I know this has been generic and probably somewhat bland, but I am relying on the idea that the reader knows plenty of specific examples, and he has already plugged in the specifics on the fly.

Sometimes, Things Just Slide out of One's Control

About eight years ago, I realized that I am a control freak. I think, however, that my disease is a bit different from typical manifestations of the disorder. Most control freaks I have met need to assert control over the physical elements of their lives. They have a system for organizing the desks, sorting the mail and personal papers, storing their clothes, managing their daily calendar - that sort of thing.

My disorder is limited - and I apply the term somewhat facetiously - to control over my psychological environment. The desk may be messy and usually is. The laundry will get sorted at some point, and I do have a system for doing so, but I feel no sense of urgency toward completing that task. Ok, I do when I am running out of appropriate clothing for work or the gym, but generally, those types of tasks don't upset my emotional applecart.

I need to feel in control of the situations and the people around me. This malady is extremely troublesome because I am well aware of the fact that I am not in control of the situations or the people around me. I think sometimes I could go insane with only a gentle push.

Cases in point: I am all out of sorts today for a couple of reasons, and though I have been counseling myself on an intellectual level, my own words of wisdom are falling rather flat.

Yesterday at work, I was involved in a conflict where I was apparently failing to adequately take charge of an expected duty. I was caught off guard because I thought I was doing the expected thing. I won't go into details because they aren't germane to this discussion. I messed up; I was held responsible; I am internally pouting. Twenty-four hours later, despite great efforts to convince myself that, because I thought I was handling the situation as asked, there was nothing I could have done to avoid it. I must put it behind me, make certain not to repeat the error, and try my best to avoid similar mistakes in the future. I had no control over the change in psychological status, and I still feel emotionally as if I have placed my forehead on a baseball bat, spun around twenty times, then tried to run a forty yard dash.

Complicating the coping/recovery process is an accident that occured in my front yard at 3:30 am. A young man fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from college. He left the roadway in front of my house, came over a bank between the road and my driveway, ran into the car I am currently driving (though fortunately I wasn't doing so at the time), did a vehicular one and a half with at least a full twist, and landed upright in his car in a position that made it look as if he had parked behind my car.

In the process of doing this, he propelled my car, a small SUV about ten feet diagonally, so that it was sitting in my front yard, its rear end smashed into a young maple tree. The passenger side of both vehicles are about mid engine. Both cars are total losses.

I probably should have told you the driver is OK before now. He is fine. Maybe because he was asleep, and also because he had his seatbelt on and his aribags deployed, he came through a 60 mph collision with an SUV about twice the weight of his car with a few cuts. He probably received the cuts when he scrambled out of the car, came to my front door, and rang my ancient crank handle door bell, rousing the dog, my wife, and I in the wee hours.

He said, and I quote, "I fell asleep at the wheel. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I totaled my car, and the damage to your car is significant too."
How's that? The damage to my car is signficant!

What's significant is that he rang my doorbell after a crash like that.

But back to my malady. The car he totaled actually belongs to my daughter. We switched vehicles when she left for college so that she could drive the one with better gas mileage. The car once belonged to my daughter's friend's father, a loveable, opinionated guy with whom my family and I had a good relationship when the kids were little. We came into ownership of the car when he died - too young - after essentially drinking himself to death.

Of course, I know that I have/had no control over any of those things: the accident, the alcoholism, the intimely death. Yet this situaiton is adding to my distress, no matter how hard I work to provide self-therapy. I liked Pippy, whose name was George but whom I called Tom (all true), and every once in awhile I felt a little connection to him when I remembered that I was driving his truck. Nevertheless, I am out of control of my sense of well being. I am feeling loss with the destruction of a vehicle that had no special redeeeming features. It was a twelve year old SUV. I liked driving it, but it really wasn't a special thing, except that it reminded me of my friend once in a while.

Late this evening, I am sitting here typing this, hoping that by doing so I will regain my artificial equilibrium. I am not confident or optimistic - and that is really the source of the problem. I know that I haven't ever had control over things, but I work pretty hard to maintain the delusions that I do. I am therefore all befuddled because reality has swept in and unceremoniously stripped me of my fabrications, and now that same reality is standing in my living room laughing at me.

I tried to nap, but I didn't even have control over that. Tonight we must turn back the clocks, so that starting Monday I will go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. The time of year weighs on me too.

Being a control freak isn't easy.

So, Really, What's Wrong With Being a Democrat?

Though I feel no strong animus toward the people on the left side of the aisle, I do often experience incredulity. As an idealist, I understand the 'progressives' (not liberal's) desire to believe that the collective power of humanity, driven by noble intentions and good will, CAN direct a government to take almost parental care of its citizens.

I also happen to be a cynic. That side takes precedence in matters political, so that I can not bring myself to subscribe to the delusion that any group of people, given power over others, will not succumb to the temptation to take care of themselves at the expense of others.

Consequently, I am a moderate Republican. I can't make it to far right because these people are really just the opposite incarnation of the far left. Both fringes are ruled by emotion. The forces in the middle of both dispositions are the only ones whom we can trust to govern, but the most powerful means of persuasion in the world is emotion. Therefore, the platform for each side must make peace with the extremists: they win the most arguments and so garner the most votes.

I tend to defend the Constitution, perhaps because it has proven to be a remarkably flexible and reasonable approach to governance. The framers argued long and hard and tried to inoculate the Great Experiment against the virus that is human frailty. Translation: the Constitution delineates limits in many cases so that the federal government cannot neglect its duty to provide fundamental services for its people. However, the document also avoids delineation in some cases so that leaders can not exercise powers they ought not have.

For instance? The Constitution provides no place for the federal government to dictate the creation of a national health care program. It does not because to do so will abridge the freedom of the individual. Yet it does not prohibit a state from creating a healthcare vehicle that is formulated by the state. Most states currently have no provision for creating just such an agency, but they could pass provisions through the amendment of their state constitution.

I don't want a state or federal health care plan. I want the situaiton to grow so unwieldy that states are persuaded to make regulations that protect the citizens and guard against abuses. Whether at the state or federal level, I object to the idea of prescribed health care because the cynic in me knows that an agency with the power to control so much money is destined to become a way for a few greedy individuals to make money at the expense of others. The idealist in me wants to believe that carefully crafted regulations can prevent such abuse, and that ingenuity and noble intentions will drive people to create fair, effective mechanisms by which people can access healthcare.

I think most Democrats are hopeful idealists. Like them, I would love to have a government that is benevolent and which ensures rights, privileges, and protections for its people. But the cynic in me doesn't trust people, especially in powerful groups, to be able to maintain that benevolence. So I want a mandated limitation of the exercise of power.

Of course, this rumination has been provoked by the shift in power that is expected to be the result of these 2010 elections. If the House does shift to the right, I am not going to be happy though. I think the shift is emotional and somewhat driven by pettiness. As an earlier commentary noted, people will be voting against a current state of affairs, not in favor of a 'better' way to do things. Remember the cynic in me isn't very hopeful or trustworthy.

What I would like is for the citizenry to think everything through. Voting the Democratic way can be a statement that says one has faith and hope in people and the instituations they create. Voting Republican can be a statement that says indivisual people and their organizations can provide the benevolent services that a society needs to thrive.

I am sorry to believe that most voters vote not with their consciences, since doing so requires rational thought and careful examination. Instead, the rights and the lefts will primarily vote with their emotional selves at the forefront - reacting to fear of one kind or another.