blogs that never became blogs

I'm doing a sort-of Cliffs Notes on blogs that I wanted to write but never wrote because I either couldn't articulate them or they might have come across as too offensive.

This is the first year that I realized camping isn't about rest or recreation, but about restoration . . . to my sense of awe, to my family, to the dirt under my feet

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The world isn't flat. Sorry, Friedman. I enjoyed the read a few years back, but it's round, way too round.

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I like narcisstic bloggers. I don't mean deeply narcisstic, but I mean that I like when someone writes a blog and makes it personal. You might be Henry Kissinger, but I don't care what you think if I feel that I don't know you. Incidentally, I won't ever know Henry Kissinger since he died (perhaps real recently, but I'm too lazy to go to Google and find out)

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Someone told me that I lost my man card once I watched the Christopher Lowell Show. Two days ago I broke up a four foot deep hunk of concrete with a jackhammer. Do I get my man card back? And, is the "man card" thing a piece of pop culture that I've missed from not seeing enough t.v.?

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I will someday look back at this period of my life and realize that I missed out on a ton of great movies, because most of what I see is animated.

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I'll never trust a curriculum map if they can't tell me the destination. Besides, I'd rather get lost on an exploration than spend a vacation eating Kettle Korn with tourists in high socks and fanny packs.

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I don't get the whole living together before marriage thing. It feels a bit like indentured servitude, like you have to meet a bunch of criteria and then you get to have the marriage. It feels like a marriage without trust. I'm not saying that I think you're a bad person if you live together before you're married. I'm just saying that I don't get it.

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My mentor Brad the Philosopher once told me that if I ever go to Europe I should only visit one cathedral. After that, it loses it's magic. I told him that if he wanted to see something something magestic he should see the sequoia forests in California. It's like a cathedral without the guilt and that you can spend a lifetime under them and they'll never lose their magic. He told me the real magic is in the look on a kid's face when he walks under one of them for the first time ever.

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Comparing a PC to a Mac is like comparing a Honda to a Lexus. Of course it's going to come with better programs if it costs three times as much. It makes me sad that the argument hides a deeper reality: schools could save so much money if they just switched to Linux.

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My friend Dan should really just pony up and buy a Sufjan Stevens album. Dan lives in Illinois, but that's not the album he should buy. He should start with Seven Swans. Here's why Sufjan is a good fit for Dan: his lyrics are poetic and smart, he uses a wide variety of instruments and his songs are never too long or too short for what they need to be. Dan might be the smartest guy I know and I really miss his blogs. Someday I think he'll surprise me and come up with a novel and I'll get a manuscript in the mail.

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Humor is almost always the last part of myself that I show people. I come across as way serious as a result. It's like I'm wired backwards. I don't get into the "fun and playful" zone until about the second or third year as a friend.

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I have a harder time than ever talking politics. It's not that I'm uneducated, but that I'm more unsure. I can see a lot of validity on both sides and even the term "both sides" bothers me because there are usually so many sides that all bring up great points. I'm not saying I believe in a trendy "all truths are the same" concept, but that there are shades to every argument and politically at least, I'm feeling like the guy standing at the paint store trying to decipher between "dusty moonbeam" and "french vanilla."

Jesus and Twitter -- or, why one should be careful with metaphors

The following is based upon an actual experience yesterday.

Does parenting make people happy?

Micah calls me outside to look at the moon. It's been ages since I looked at it, I mean really looked at the moon. I stare for awhile, but the beauty isn't up there. It's in his face, lit by the lunar rays (or the solar rays reflected off the moon or whatever it is that makes him look so innocent). It's in the feel of the grass under my feet and the leftover smell of barbecue and the warmth of a Phoenix summer, where it never does cool down. It's the kind of moment when it feels easier to believe in God. I can stare into the cosmos and there is a sense that he's present, not just out there, but right here, standing on the grass.

Micah clings to me when he hears fire crackers (because what's more American than blowing shit up in the name of patriotism?) and it's a rare moment when I feel strong and it's a rare moment that I remember the feel of grass under my feet and the sound of fireworks as a child. It's in this moment that I feel a connection to my dad.

People ask me if I'm happy being a dad. It's a loaded question. I'm tired all the time. I never sleep in . . . and by that I mean I never get a morning where I don't wake up around six. Christy and I can't do spontaneous dates and we no longer have the money to afford a nice restaurant anyway. I have dreams, really distant dreams, of speaking at conferences or publishing research and I can't run recklessly toward the dreams anymore.

But I've never laughed as hard as I have being a dad. I've never smiled this much. I've never gotten the chance to teach someone who is learning it for the first time ever. I've never had an excuse to paint in watercolor or to make a Lego statue to the ceiling. I've never gotten to sing aloud so often or read in theatrical voice or play with a wiffle ball. I've never been in a place of such huge responsibility, walking so blindly and so aware of my own humanity.

It's not that parenting makes me more happy. It's that I've totally shifted where I find happiness. I used to believe it was an elusive "when." I'd be happy when I got married or happy when I got a house or happy when I wrote a book. I'm learning to be happy in the moment. I'm learning to enjoy the journey. I'm learning from two little guys who couldn't care less about money or status or sense of humor.

So, as I stand under the moonlight, there's a part of me that wants to thank Micah for what he's helping me to recapture. It's mysterious and intangible, but for lack of a better phrase, thanks for helping me to recover the sense of the grass beneath my feet.

another hidden cost to moving to the cloud

It took me approximately one hour to retool my new computer. I added iTunes, Chrome, PhotoFiltre, NVU, CMaps and a few open source programs. I cleared out the annoying programs that have no place in my Windows Vista (yes, I have a PC and I'll tell you why in my next post) and changed the background image.

Last time I bought a computer, it took days to add programs, transfer files and create the new settings. This time, however, I've moved to the cloud (a trendy word for switching tasks from the computer to the internet). Don't get me wrong, I am retticent about moving entirely online and living out a digital identity the the abstract cumulus that keeps expanding. Still, there is a certain relief in switching computers so quikly.

During this process, Christy did some cleaning up of her Facebook. She deleted friends who never really were friends. She changed her profile picture and downloaded an album of pictures. As I watched her, I started to think about the time costs of the cloud. Although I don't have to deal with creating folders and subfolders, I find myself color-coding labels in Gmail and changing the background setting. Although I don't need to back up so many Word documents, I have spent countless hours changing my blog visuals, reorganizing links and analyzing Feedburner statistics.

It would be interesting to do a time inventory on how much time I spend shuffling things around my cloud. I wonder if some day the cloud will get too big and I'll drop to this terrestrial terrain of my laptop.

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ancawonka/65927497/

Graven Images: A Post About Arne

I love to sketch things when I'm bored. I draw during staff meetings all the time. I've always been real self-concious about it, because I can draw and paint, but I'm not so great with doodles. Despite this, I'm going to start posting my "graven images" (I call it that because they are irreverant in the sense of untalented and in their rejection of the system) to this blog. (I admit that I'm borrowing the name from Doyle the Science Teacher)

if you normally read this blog in a reader . . .

. . . check out the actual site today and click on the different rollover links at the top. I added pictures from a student named Itzel. She new what I wanted this blog to become and so the last week of school she made some sketches for me and for our class blog as well. I guess I'm a little bit too much like the proud parent who puts the pictures up on the fridge, but I really do think these pictures look cool. She did a similar comic book about immigration that is on our class blog as well.

naming rights

I find it disturbing how often the U.S. names weapons of mass destruction on conquered indigineous people groups.

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/destinysagent/2576915531/

The Vinyl Paradox

The most relevant trends right now seem to be those that are least relevant. I can't count the number of women (okay, and men) I know who have taken up knitting and crocheting. Most of my friends who own homes also have gardens. I can count about ten people I know who roll their own cigarrettes. And vinyl records keep increasing in popularity.

It's easy to label all of these trends as a rebirth in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement. Instead, it's more like an excercise in voluntary complexity. It's the idea that I want to feel the dirt in my hands and stir the vegetables in a pot and not simply toss a box into the microwave. It's the notion that my wife wants to spend time thinking about someone's child as she knits a blanket. It's the idea that sometimes music is best heard when I can't skip it or take it with me like a commodity.

I can't identify the impetus toward all things complex. My guess is that my generation felt enthralled by the eager, idealistic wave toward the Digital Age. It's not that we grew bored with it, but somehow dissapointed. It turns out that it was a lot of cheap plastic promises and grandiose statements about flat worlds and online community and other elements of magical thinking. Whirling from the Digital Ride, they stand dizzy with a certain whiplash of the soul.

Don't get me wrong, many of the people I know haven't abandoned technology and joined Amish communities. They still use Twitter and Facebook, but they often do so out of a sense of obligation. So, they keep a foot in the digital world and a foot in the garden. Though we are called Digital Natives, we feel alien and yearn for all that is lost in the crystal clear wireless translation. So, we yearn for things like tradition and complexity, community and relationships, regionalism and parochialism.

People are becoming Greek Orthodox, because they miss the ritual and mystery. They're baking bread, because they miss the feel of food on their hands. They're sending handwritten letters to friends who can't be placed on a top eight, sending updates that don't go on a wall, but look great on a fridge. They're sewing digging weeds out of gardens where the only tweets are from the birds. Call it the vinyl paradox. We are becoming relevant by not being relevant.

thoughts on Iran

Each day as I go to the gym, I see images of the protests in Iran. No context. No history. No explanation. So, I try to shelter myself by watching highlights on ESPN. Still, I hear about it on NPR and I read about it in Time and I can't help thinking about what's going on in Tehran.

I've wanted to blog about this for awhile, but I can't get it into words very well. So, here is a list of what it stirs up inside of me:

• Media shapes society and society shapes media. What we use as a narcissistic tool (Guess what I'm eating for lunch) can be used for a Revolution. Perhaps it's reciprocal. The insurgency is being shaped by social media while the insurgency shapes how social media is used.
• Revolutionaries are almost always guilty of what they revolt against. Call it the corruption of power. Call it the danger of external control pyschology. Call it the downside of having a militant approach, but the theocrats who actually run Iran had good reason to hate the shah and now they are becoming worse tyrants.
• The mere fact that people look to the U.S. for answers seems dangerous and proves my worst fear, that we are stuck as an imperialist nation and that our policy simply shifted from direct control (as in Iraq) to one of hegemony.
• There is no such thing as an Iranian prototype. No nation is simply a "brainwashed group." When I see the number of moderate, post-modern protestors it reminds me of the dangers in calling the people of Iran "extremists."
• Iran was not created by an outsider. It's not like Iraq in the sense of being carved out by imperialist Britain. It's a nation with a rich history and layers of culture. Why this matters is that the seeds of disconentent are social and political rather than cutural or ethnic. Protestors vary from anger toward poverty to government corruption to women's rights. If there is a change in government, it won't mean a splintered nation like Iraq.

my first glimpse at a windowless classroom

This is an expansion on a comment I wrote on Science Teacher's Blog.

I checked out my new class as a computer teacher. It's sterile and empty and quiet, save a few buzzing computers. Don't get me wrong, it's nice, much nicer than I am used to. The computers are state-of-the-art. The plugs are on the ground. I have an ActivBoard. It's a techno-dream come true.

I hung up a few posters and kept thinking, "there's something wrong." I thought it was the lack of murals (I haven't gotten permission to paint on walls) but then it hit me, "I'm in a cave." The school is all indoors. It's a bit like being in a Vegas casino.

They say it's more eco-friendly this way. It might save electricity, but I'm not sure that a windowless school helps kids become friends with the ecological surroundings. During our hot summer days, I play games with the boys in a house illuminated by the sun. Call it a psychological crutch, but something in my soul thrives on sunlight.

At my last school, I stood in the sun for four minutes every hour. I knew the time by the shadows on my class walls. Now, I'm stuck trusting the clock.

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/extranoise/207532495/