The Misty Mountain

Awesome meets Disappointing

2011-10-15T22:53:00.003-06:00

I saw Styx for the first time in 2007 and was amazed by the band's energy, especially Tommie Shaw parading around the stage with his long blonde hair and skinny jeans looking like a teenage girl from my view on the grass. My wife surprised me with tickets to the Styx-REO Speedwagon concert this year while I was attending a conference in Salt Lake. I joined my good friends Atlee, Danielle and Brett, who came done from Logan. Once again the band was awesome, from Foolish Young Man to Grand Illusion to Crystal Ball to Come Sail Away to Renegade, it was well worth the next day's heavy eyelids through the morning's four-hours of seminars and the concluding keynote speaker.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself (even through Speedwagon's set of deep tracks before they finally played Ridin' the Storm Out), but I have to say I saw something that disappointed me. No, not the hundreds of boozed up fans of all ages screaming and slurring together verses of 'Man in the Wilderness' or the Tom Arnold look-alike getting stoned out of his mind sitting behind us, or the fact that the 50+ year old booty shaker fifteen yards in front of us wore out after Speedwagon and left the concert wheezing in her husband's arms during the intermission. No, what really got to me was the healthy young kids in front of us aged somewhere between 18-24 who were singing, dancing and having a great time, but also smoking.

I guess I really have been sheltered in Provo, and even out here in Roosevelt at teaching at the behavioral unit where most of the kids smoke or chew or both. Now those 'kids' at the concert weren't that much younger than me-the concert was a present for my 26th birthday, but I was still surprised and disappointed to see young people passing cigarettes around for a puff. Only about 20% of Americans smoke today, which makes sense seeing that people who smoke live 13 years less than those who do not smoke (all stats from the CDC). It ruins quality of life and life expectancy, so why start, right? Well people still do--every day about 3,450 youth under 18 smoke for the first time and 850 begin smoking on a daily basis.

As a health educator, I feel great disappointment when I see young people smoking. One statistic that shocks me is that nearly 30% of adults with high school degrees or less smoke compared to just 9% of college graduates. So there's something about education that keeps people from smoking. It's not surprising because, the more educated you are the more likely to know that your life expectancy is greater by not smoking and life insurance is cheaper, as well. But it's odd because college graduates are more likely to be able to have the discretionary income to afford such an expensive habit, and those who do not have degrees are more likely to be employed in jobs requiring physical labor, which is made more difficult by smoking. Quite the paradox, but the powers of addiction and the influence of peers and parents is greater than that of a health teacher or a schoolwide scare campaign or Red Ribbon Week or a couple of PSA's with statistics like the one's I've thrown out there. Without solid, loving efforts in the home to keep kids on track to reach high goals, youth will engage in risky behaviors.

The moral of the story-don't believe in the grand illusion of tobacco use or what fun is had in renegade behaviors--you're fooling yourself and you don't believe it, killing yourself and you won't believe it. Don't let life end too early, be smart, don't even start.

The Rising

2011-09-11T16:06:00.002-06:00

Ten years ago the tragic events of today inspired Bruce Springsteen to write some incredible music dedicated to the victims and heroes involved in the cowardly attack against innocent people. I've been listening to that album--'The Rising'--all weekend. I highly recommend the whole album, especially the songs, "You're Missing", "My City of Ruins", "The Rising", and "Into the Fire". These four sum up the feelings of sorrow and resolution felt in every American's heart that day. The common theme is right in the album's title--to rise after being beat down. In "My City of Ruins" he sings, "Rise up!" and "With these hands I pray for the faith Lord, I pray for the strength" and in "The Rising" the chorus goes, "Come on up for the rising, come on up lay your hands in mine". And the chorus of "Into the Fire" (specifically about the firefighters) is a prayer that "My your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope may your love give us love." Again, I would highly recommend listening to these songs. If not to rekindle the feelings we felt after the events of 9/11, to cheer up the heavy hearts we are all feeling in our current day and age.

Yes, ten years following the disastrous terrorist attacks on our country we seem to be falling apart all over again. Faith in and approval of our political leaders is much lower than it was in 2001, and it seems that we are running out of hope. Have we fought terrorism. Yes we have. Are people afraid of terrorism? More than they were Sept. 10, 2001, but less than they were Sept. 12, 2001. Terror is not our number one priority anymore. We even caught Osama bin Laden this year, but even that wasn't enough to lighten everyone's spirits through this time of economic turmoil. What we need now is a rising. The media is painting a dismal picture of the future and the people are buying it. Honestly, it doesn't look good, but it didn't look too great ten years ago, either. So I think we need to follow the same recipe for success in raising the nation's spirits.

1) Go out and buy a flag and fly it-the first part of having faith in the future is to at least look like you do.

2) Listen to The Rising-Those lyrics have the same power for us now. Did we feel beaten the week following 9/11? No, we felt like we could take on the world (and we did, sort of). We felt like Toby Keith did when he sang "The Angry American," we felt like Bruce in The Rising.

Will these solve our economic crisis. No, but they should make us feel a little better about things. I listened to "Into the Fire" a lot when I was looking for a job, and it did make me feel better about the situation. Some nights I would listen to "My City of Ruins" and that would make me feel better about going to bed after a day filled with applications, rejections, and no new leads. It's hard to go to bed without hope. 'For if ye have not hope ye must needs be in despair' (Moro. 10:22). Sometimes I woke up feeling like the song "Empty Sky" but got out of that funk because I knew "The Rising" would come and "a dream of life comes to me like a catfish dancin' on the end of the line." This is the dream that we must learn to dream again. It is the American dream, but it can only be brought to pass by a rising.

The Miracle of Getting a Job

2011-08-10T08:58:00.002-06:00

I don't normally blog about my life or the spiritual experiences that drive it, but this week I got a job that was clearly provided by the Lord. So as an answer to President Uchtdorf's challenge to "use your hands to blog or text message the gospel to all the world" I have decided do so now.

I applied for a biology teaching job in Roosevelt, UT and they called me for an interview, but we were camping so we had to schedule it on a different day than they wanted. Courtney and I were really excited and I worked extra hard preparing for the interview, but when I called the day before, I found out they gave the job away already. The asked me if I had any math background and I told him, "No" because, well, I didn't take a single math course in college, but later that night I found myself writing the principal an email, telling him how awesome I'd be at teaching math. So I interviewed for the job two days later and it went really well. I felt really good about it and--despite my lack of proof of my math proficiency--I thought I would get the job. Nearly a week passed, however, with no word from them, so I called the principal to see what was going on. He said that I beat out the other 20 Utah applicants hands down, but they were interested in seeing a few of the out of state applicants in person, which would be on Tuesday, and he told me that they would call me after the interviews so I could make my case for hiring me. I started the next day (Thursday) preparing to take a practice math teaching exam (called the Praxis) so I could show them I was proficient in math. Friday I got a call from Jerome High School asking me to interview for the biology teaching position over there and heavily hinting that they wanted to straight up hire me. Well, I took my practice test and passed the Utah passing score by 6%, and we drove to Jerome after church on Sunday. Monday morning I had the interview, and I hadn't been home an hour when they called to offer the job to me. I asked for a day to sleep on it, but really I just wanted to hear about the Roosevelt job. Tuesday came and the principal phoned me with the sad news that I did not get the job. BUT apparently the assistant superintendent who was in my interview was really impressed with me and wanted to contact me about another job in the district. He called about 20 minutes later and had me on speakerphone with the principal of their alternative school (the school where kids who behave poorly go). The job would be teaching math and science to kids at this school and perhaps even starting a basketball program. Just to let you know, earlier I substituted for an alternative high school and I absolutely loved it. After that day I wanted to teach at a place like that more than anywhere else. So they ended the call and five minutes later they called back and offered me the job. I took it, of course I did. So here are some of the little miracles:

1) We knew we were supposed to move to Roosevelt from the start. It was a strong spiritual impression that both Courtney and I felt, so I kept doing all I could do to get hired there--for as we learn from Nephi, "it is by grace that we are saved, after all that we can do." I knew that it was only through a constant, faithful effort that God would make up for what I lacked. (Which is also the reason I applied for every job I could this summer)

2) I didn't make it to the biology interview. If I had, I wouldn't have gotten that job and maybe wouldn't have even applied for the math position.

3) There was a math position open. It wasn't even posted online because it was their third round of interviews, they were still interviewing original applicants.

4) They needed a football coach. A big reason I was considered was because I could coach the football team. If not for that, I wouldn't have been given the time of day.

5) The assistant superintendent was impressed by my interview, so he pursued hiring me for the alternative school job. The interview went really well, but it was hard to judge who was skeptical of me and who wasn't.

6) I was offered the Jerome job. Without the Jerome offer I wouldn't have been able to push them to make their decision about me the same day. They wanted me to come in and interview and drag it out over another week, which would have been torture.

7) I actually think this job is the one I would prefer over the other 200 I applied for (and I didn't even apply for it)

So this is going to be awesome. This week has been yet another revelation to me about the power of fasting and prayer (which I had done the last two Sundays with the purpose of gaining the faith requisite to bring to pass the miracles necessary to get a job). I had told Courtney a number of times, "It's going to take a miracle for me to get a job," and as it turns out it took at least seven--I don't know what else happened that I'm not aware of.

This experience reaffirms what I already knew--God and Jesus Christ love us and that if we ask our Father for bread he will not give us a stone, but will give us even more than we asked for. I just read Elder Bednar's conference talk and I have a testimony that revelation and blessings come line upon line, but he who is patient and has faith will eventually receive God's blessing.

Education reform brought to you by The Hands

2011-07-27T12:11:00.001-06:00

I was recently reading a friend's blag post found here: http://spyewtsrfat.blogspot.com/2011/07/edu.html. He gives some pretty good ideas of how to reform education. Being a friend of his who is not counted as one of the education majors who is "dumber than a box of hammers" I gave him props and submit my own few ideas (I wrote this as a comment on his blag first, but decided to post it here, too):

1) Pool all resources so as to eliminate disparities between all schools. They do this in Canada and it works out great. Of course the nature of people in Canada seems to be to agree to pool resources and make equal treatment available whether it be education or healthcare. The problem with doing this in the states is the whole 'local control' idea, which is a really big thing (especially in Utah) and I don't see it happening.

2) Cut administrative costs. Some of these school districts are enormous and have a huge bureaucracy (Thus New York public school's leading the nation spending $17,000 per pupil). This can be cut for sure, but I think the larger problem lies in the number of small school districts. Example: Wyoming has 48 school districts for their 87,000 students. There are 33 school districts in America with larger enrollments than the entire state. This is obviously a problem caused by the extremely small population density of Wyoming, but it exists because of people'e feelings for local control. People can't seem to get over their desire to control the education of their children, yet complain when they see the results stacked against the world. You know why the Asian Tigers lead in education? Because the state controls education and the parents push the kids. The difference is that A)our parents either forget that their kids may need to not participate in 14 extracurriculars in order to appropriate sufficient time to their studies or forget to do the whole parenting thing altogether and B)our bureaucracy is open to pretty much anyone these days, whereas in Asian countries it is a highly respected position that requires-you guessed it-a high score on a state mandated intelligence test. Which brings me to..

3) Teachers need to be required to perform some sort of professional development, and I'm not talking about showing up to a conference or a meeting and counting up hours. It should require advanced college classes and research and a portfolio. Right now re-credentialing is done online and costs, like, $100 depending on the state. More should be required. Also, in order to get an endorsement teachers are required to pass an ETS administered tests (although some states have their own because they think they're more special or should have more local control), but the scores required by states are all about 70%. That needs to be upped.

Plumbing Fail

2011-07-13T09:33:00.004-06:00

I tried using a drain snake to unclog our bathroom sink. Little did I know the J-pipe had the structural integrity of a wet paper towel. As you can see, the snake did not make the turn, but went straight through, uncovering yet another problem for me to fix. I think it may have been the original fixture (circa 1950). As I tried to unscrew the IP later the pipe twisted in half, cutting my thumb in the process. But I installed the new pipe and flushed the clog out with drano and a hose, as per the instructions of my landlord (who is 80 and doesn't want to spend money on a plumber to come fix it), so now all is well.

State Reciprocity

2011-06-21T08:38:00.004-06:00

The term "state reciprocity" is used by universities to describe a degree or license awarded that is recognized by other states as well. Most schools claim to award teaching licenses or certificates that are recognized by nearly every other state of the union. So with my certificate from BYU I've been applying for jobs all over the country, including 19 states and the District of Columbia, not to mention a job in Calgary, which was both my first application and my first rejection letter (no one promised reciprocity with other countries). I thought expanding my horizons would give me a better chance at getting a job, and at first that idea held true. My first real interview (not a screening interview) was with a school in Wellton, Arizona--a town known for its massive feed lot and more recently, for a psycho shooter that drove into Yuma. The interview went well and the principal explained the licensing process I'd go through upon getting the job. It was easy-take a few ESL courses and teach for a year, then apply and BAM, it would be mine. Well, I didn't get the job, and my count is at 132 jobs I've applied for, and among the rejection letters/emails, most have been from out of state schools. I didn't think anything of it, but then I had a screening interview with Phoenix Union High School District. The interviewer asked me if I had started my application for an Arizona teaching credential. I answered "Why pay over a hundred dollars for something I only need if I actually get a job?" He answered that every teacher in the district must hold and Arizona teacher's license at the beginning of the school year. So much for state reciprocity.

The idea of the state having control over its education system is based solely on the founding fathers failing to enumerate public education as a power of the federal government. It would take a constitutional amendment to create national control of public education, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. That's because even though everyone in the country believes that we should provide free public education to all children we must A) stick to the constitutional verbage written by the founding fathers (who did not believe in national education--except for Thomas Jefferson) and B) localize control of what our children are learning.

Local control is one of those phrases that gets a lot of use and a lot of respect in education policy circles. This makes a lot of sense to me because funding for schools is locally based, so the control is locally based. Funding does come from the federal government, but the bread and butter of every district is local. States try to standardize things and streamline their programs, which creates this whole mess regarding teacher training reciprocity, not to mention high school education reciprocity.

But this is the reason for public education. Any nation's public education is built for a single purpose, which is to indoctrinate the youth of a nation with the culture of the governing class. However, because our national government is handcuffed from controlling education, the indoctrination includes the fundamental beliefs of the predominate culture of the state and in some cases even the areas of school districts. In America we created public education to perpetuate the idea of the American Dream (one's ability to succeed in "attaining the fullest stature of which (he or she) is innately capable, and be recognized for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position). That is the only common stream in the education system--anyone can succeed (We might also compare this to the myth of the medals in Plato's Republic, but that's a story for another time). Our education system lacks a common thread because of the need for state and local control, breeding the indoctrination of state and local culture, not national culture. This organizational fault is part of the reason we see so much disparity between states and between urban-rural-suburban schools. Because the curriculum and teacher credentialing standards are different from state to state and district to district the education of students from one state or district to the next will be inherently unequal.

So ending this on a slightly different vein than I started, I would like to say a word about winning the future: it won't happen unless we centralize our educational system. It's the only way we can properly work together as a nation to meet the changing needs of the American workforce. But there are two reasons this will never come to pass: 1) Conservative interpretation of the Constitution and the difficulty of creating an amendment empowering the federal government to provide public education and 2) America is not a 'melting pot' as much as it is actually a grocery store. Yes, there are a variety of cultures here, but they are--for the most part--compartmentalized into different regions and even different areas of cities and towns. Therefore the predominant culture within the district will beg/cry/fight for its right to push its agenda (strong words, I know, but it is what it is) on the children in its jurisdiction, and it will do so under the assumption that it is what the parents want and what they believe is best for their children--regardless whether or not it is what is best for the country represented by the flag to which they pledge allegiance every morning in the classroom.

Curse of the Amish Friendship Bread

2011-05-12T08:54:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago Courtney's visiting teacher came during the day when she was asleep. I answered the door and took from her a wrapped up piece of bread, a bag filled with gooey stuff and page of directions. When Courtney shared the bread with me I decided that it would be worth it to squish the dough every day and add the stuff to make the bread. As the days passed Courtney made fun of me for doing it, and I understood why. This is ridiculous. How could passing on such a taxing recipe possibly make someone think you want to be friends? It seemed like punishment to me. In fact, I decided not to pass it along as per the directions, but to just bake the whole eight loaves myself and give them away. Besides, there's no telling how long this had already been passed on, and how rotten that milk was. I thought I was doing our friends a favor by saving them the hassle of the ten day process and just baking them a loaf of bread.

Great idea, right? Well...

You know those chain emails that say "if you don't pass this to ten people then a baby seal will get clubbed by Dick Cheney" that you always delete? That's sort of how I felt about this bread, but a baby seal actually did get clubbed by Dick Cheney. I misread the directions and got this as a result:

Those stinkin' Amish cursed their stupid bread recipe. I was going to stop the chain and I was the baby seal that got clubbed. It tasted alright, but the texture was similar to bread pudding, which I cannot handle, so I threw both loaves and the other starter mixes out because my proportions were off.

(In the future, I'd be more than happy to try again Amish friendship bread, but I'll plan on perpetuating the stupid recipe instead of taking matters into my own hands)

The System is Broken

2011-04-04T07:21:00.003-06:00

"The system is broken." That's what they've told us recently, at least. It seems to be code for, "We don't have any money to fund public works, so we're cutting budgets, restructuring and blaming it on 'problems' in the system that we were too lazy to fix before." We've heard it about immigration, the BCS, collective bargaining in Wisconsin, and the most popular target--education. Some of these claims are true--the immigration situation is ridiculous, as is college football's method of finding a national champion, as is the public paying for the equal benefits and retirement plans of uneducated careerist bureaucrats and members of the most underpaid and consistently educated profession in America--teachers. While I do not believe the education system is 'broken,' I do believe that parts of it are, and that few or none of these parts are being addressed by state legislatures. I started three posts in the last two months about various problems I have with some states' new education plans (particularly Idaho), but they were all filled with bitterness, Idaho election results and budget histories, and Glen Beck-esque conspiracy theories about Watson on Jeopardy! being the new computer overlord of Idaho--and I don't really want to subject anyone to any of that.

This post is about something in education that recently made me thing, "The system is broken." I read about it a year and a half ago in the first chapter of Goodlad, Soder and Sirotnik's 'The Moral Dimensions of Teaching.' The problem dates back further than I'd care to research, but in 1961 it was amplified when Yale hired C. Vann Woodward with the highest salary for a professor in the country and was not required to teach at all in his first year. To many of you who have been to a university lately, this may not surprise you--part of being a professor is doing research. In fact, they are required by the university to get published in order to stay on faculty. We've all had professors who were awful, horrible teachers, yet were kept on staff because of their amazing research. Even in schools of education the faculty is not filled with highly-experienced teachers who have been hired because they were rock star teachers. It's filled with Faustian academics who research high up in their ivory towers, then come down to classrooms where they lecture to future teachers, preparing them to do a job they've never done themselves.

I was lucky enough to have as the supervisor for my major someone with years of experience as a teacher, who was sought out by the university to get his PhD and teach for BYU. One of the faculty members on the hiring committee told me that a principal once told him that my professor was 'the best teacher he had ever seen in all his 30 years in the school system.' I believe it, too. He was a great influence for me to be a teacher and taught me more than any of those learned sages of research in the McKay School of Education. I thought that this professor of mine was so awesome that I wanted to do what he did--get pre-service teachers pumped and prepared for the careers n teaching ahead of them.

So it was to my great surprise and delight that on a visit to his office in January, he told me the university wants another supervisor for the major, and that he wanted me to get my degree and come back to do the job. I recently talked with him about choosing graduate schools and degrees. He told me to get a master's in statistics to go along with my doctorate to reinforce my research skills. I've applied for a lot of jobs teaching social studies because health teaching jobs are so hard to find, and he told me not to worry because I have an undergraduate degree in health and all they care about is research anyways, and they're just looking someone who can do that, has a PhD and is willing to do the job. I was shocked. Here I thinking that he was sought out and hired because he was one of the greatest health teachers in the Utah valley, and here he was conceding that his expertise wasn't even why he was hired for the job--it was because he was willing to go to school and get the training to be qualified to do it.

So I came home excited for graduate school, but also disappointed because the system was broken. Universities don't want the best teachers to prepare teachers, they want researchers who will get the name of the school printed underneath their own name in academic journals. I began to worry about whether I'll be a good enough teacher to feel that I warrant the job for which I'm preparing. Since my realization about the lack of professional teaching experience in teacher preparation programs I've wanted to research the problem, but now I feel like I'm already on the road to becoming one myself. It's very possible that I'll never get the chance to teach health. States such as Idaho are making it an online course in order to cut costs (yeah, I know, totally picked the wrong teaching major, but the fact that it was the shortest teaching major really should have been a clue). But even if I teach Utah history for five years I can get this job because I'll have my undergraduate degree, my student teaching experience and a few years of in-classroom teaching experience.

Well, anyways, no use worrying about this when I can't even find a job in the first place...first things first.

Jerry Sloan's Final and Greatest Influence

2011-02-11T11:55:00.005-07:00

I've been waiting for Jerry Sloan to step down for years. I remember when I came back from my mission, seeing Jerry Sloan and thinking it was his frozen corpse hauled out into the coach's seat. Then I saw him explode on a referee in the third quarter and get T'd up, at which point I realized that he was not actually dead. He made a great run with the Jazz, and was an NBA legend (despite never winning a championship). In fact, if it weren't for Michael Jordan he might have been the greatest Chicago Bulls player of all time and have two rings with the Jazz (probably just one, though, I don't see them beating Bird's Pacers in 1998-that team was awesome). He was a great coach, in fact I highlight the season after Stockton and Malone left when he just about coached his team led by Andrei Kirilenko and Matt Harpring to the playoffs as his greatest accomplishment, and had a great run, but he ran out of gas and couldn't handle it anymore. He was there for 22 years and only had one losing season. The only other coach in the NBA with more than 10 years with his current team is Greg Popavich (in his 15th). Pop's been there since the second half of 1996, and in his first draft acquired Tim Duncan, who he's ridden to four championships and a career .678 win percentage. Pop's ability to adjust to changes is a subject for another post (his ability to coach the Spurs, with their stars in decline, to an amazing 44-8 start this season is incredible), right now let's just focus on this: long tenured coaches with a single team are not the norm. Not in the NBA, not in other professional sports. Sloane resigning , like Bobby Cox retiring after 20 years at the helm of the Atlanta Braves, marks the end of a great run filled with winning seasons, hall of fame players and lost championships. It is the end of an era.

Today I was driving back from a doctor's appointment and heard the cheers of

Egyptians ringing out on NPR celebrating the resignation of their

leader. Hosni Mubarak did not plan on being a dictator, but did an excellent job at it for 30 years. After weeks of

quiet, civil disobedience by the Egyptian people, yesterday Mubarak tried to convince his people that it was a good idea for him to stay in power, while delegating powers to the Vice President. This is what Joe Paterno has done for years, and it has served him well, as he has been the head coach at Penn State for 44 years, and lucid for 38 of them (Just kidding! Long live JoPa!). Well, unfortunately for Mubarak, the people didn't take to that idea well, so he went the way of Bobby Bowden, who was forced to retire from his position at Florida State after 35 years.

And so Mubarak is at a Red Sea resort contemplating the future, looking back on the fantastic run he made as the 'democratically elected' president of Egypt. I'm not sure where Jerry Sloan is, but he's probably going through the same contemplative practice. I wonder if he sees what I see. I wonder if he sees a president at his home in Cairo watching Sportscenter and seeing an aging man give a speech about his stunning career, announcing its end, and repeatedly stating how much he has been blessed. He thinks to himself, "I have been blessed. I have done much good for this country. We are better now than we were 30 years ago. Maybe it's time." And he calls the vice president and tells him to announce his resignation. That's what I see.

And there you have it, Jerry Sloan influences Hosni Mubarak to step down as president of Egypt. Just think about it, it's not that much of a stretch.

The Strength of Any Nation is Rooted in the Walls of its Homes

2010-11-28T07:22:00.012-07:00

On September 23, 1995 "The Family" was proclaimed to the world by Gordon B. Hinckley. This came at the end of an address to the world's largest organization of women, the Relief Society. He followed the reading of this inspired document with the statement, "The strength of any nation is rooted within the walls of its homes," which I chose to title this post. These ideas are not new, but they are forgotten by many. Listening to Pres. Obama's state of the union address one would think that the strength of the nation is dependent on the wealth of both individuals and families. Of the several times Obama mentioned families, only once was it not in reference to their financial standing, If the nation is in distress, it is not (only) a policy problem, but I'm willing to bet it's a problem in following the Lord's commands. And the root of a generation forgetting how merciful the Lord hath been can be found in errant families. Fathers and mothers not fulfilling their responsibilities, young children not being taught, the youth of a nation not being held accountable--these are the events which lead to national tribulation. They are what lead us to make those policy decisions and sleazy business moves. If we were a stronger nation, we would be more concerned about what happens in the walls of the home. And I don't know about you, but I'm all for making 'Merca a stronger country. I have included the proclamation at the end of my post because it is always a good idea to review the truths taught therein.

That's me at six weeks. From my very birth I was part of a family. That alone is a blessing that is all to often taken for granted. I was born within the bonds of matrimony to a father and mother who followed the tenets of this proclamation before it was even issued (Then again, nothing much had changed in 1995 as far as church doctrine goes, it was simply necessary to send this message to the world to warn all of the eternal nature of and responsibilities of members in families in order to protect from the ensuing onslaught of offenses to the idea of family, which we have witnessed at various times, in various ways over the past 15 years). I owe who I am today to the parents who fulfilled their divine calling as father and mother and provided me with opportunities to learn about the gospel and choose for myself my path in life.

A little over two years ago I got married in a ceremony binding me, Courtney and our future children together for all time and eternity. This week we celebrate that long awaited time when the 'future' becomes 'now' Our little girl was born a day before Thanksgiving, healthy and happy. This past week has opened my eyes to my new role as a father. The first night I waltzed around the hospital room bouncing my baby to get her to go to sleep I looked at her small face and I thought about the potential she has. One day she will have all the opportunities her mother and I have had, but only if we respect the responsibility of parenthood given us, just as our parents before us. I really believe that it is the family that keeps communities and nations going. When the family loses sight of its purposes and responsibilities, the children don't become the upstanding citizens this country (or any country, for that matter) needs--or in certain circumstances, there are no children at all! I just don't understand that. Having our little girl stare back into my eyes I can't think of why anyone wouldn't want to bring one of God's spirit children into this beautiful world. And now we'll do the best we can to raise her up right and prepare her to be a good mother that she may experience the lasting joy a family brings, just like we have.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

"We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

“All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

“In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally. UAdd a Note

“The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

“We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.

“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. ‘Children are an heritage of the Lord’ (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

“The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

“We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

“We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”

Holidays and Hospitals

2010-11-25T09:12:00.004-07:00

For those of you who didn't know, last Christmas didn't go too well. The greatest Christmas gift we recieved was an answer for the week and a half of supersonic migraines Courtney was having. Unfortunately the answer itself was viral meningitis, as we found out when the meninges-swelling symptoms peaked the night before Christmas, and Courtney and I spent the next day and a half in a Twin Falls hospital room. But that all ended and we were in good shape after that.
This Thanksgiving we celebrate yet another holiday from the confines of a hospital-this time in the maternity ward. Our little girl was born the day before Thanksgiving, and we're all in here until after dinner (only because we'd rather not leave at 4:00AM Friday morning, when our time is up). She is adorable. We are so thankful for our family and for the fine health care professionals who spend their holidays in hospitals to make things better for people like us. And we are thankful for our bundle of Thanksgiving joy (and that she does not look like a turkey like my brother did when he was born on Thanksgiving Day 20 years ago).

Boo!

2010-10-31T08:06:00.005-06:00

So last month my friends and I were watching a couple of youtube videos by a group called mega64 including this and this. We came up with the idea that for Halloween we should be the ghosts from Mario and follow people around on campus, hiding our faces when they looked at us. Steve, Hyrum and I brainstormed about it and Steve and I worked on the boxes from Wednesday to Friday morning, and they looked awesome. We went all over campus, including the law library, Wilkinson center, and the Eyring, Clyde and Benson buildings. Here's a look at what went down.

Sometimes we chased friends

Sometimes we chased strangers

The Fire in the Dragon's Belly

2010-10-08T21:05:00.003-06:00

I want to make sure everybody's aware of a great man who won the Nobel Peace Prize today for his outstanding fight for freedoms in a country hell-bent on keeping them from the people. This man would be Liu Xiaobo. He is preceded in winning this award by others like him who were defamed by their own country as terrorists and criminals (Yassar Arafat and Nelson Mandela). In 1989 he was in the United States when students began gathering at Tienanmen square. He decided to go back to join the movement. While in the airport a man asked him, "What do you think you'll do to help?" He didn't know, but he knew he had to go, and he came out of the incident as one of the leading figures of the movement, which earned him international acclaim but also a two year prison sentence. Nearly 20 years and two prison sentences later he authored Charter 08, which is a document addressing grievances to the Chinese government for human rights. This earned Liu an eleven year prison sentance, yet even greater international acclaim. I'm really happy he was honored as a Nobel Laureate today-I think it will make the human rights problems in China more of an issue on the international scale. Yet at the same time, the Dragon has become a monster of sorts. Their economic power has made them such a worldwide power player that other economies are dependent upon them to the point that there is no leverage that could pressure them to allow their people greater freedom. Whatever change occurs in China will have to be internal. Not some college professor at the University of Beijing, not some peasant's lawyer with a multi-billion dollar class action suit, and not religious following of a hundred million Chinese, but only a persuasive voice inside the party, that will only come to power, probably by Godfather-type action taken against the leaders of the party. Whatever does end up happening in the future, Liu Xiabo will be heralded as a hero for freedom.
On a separate not, when people like Liu win the award it really puts to shame certain laureates who win the award after doing jack squat for freedom, peace, or fraternity between nations (see 2007 and 2009).

Student Teaching

2010-09-26T19:42:00.003-06:00

I'm two weeks into student teaching. I'm absolutely loving it. I teach two periods of junior high health alone and team teach another with another student teaching. At times I feel like I don't want to collaborate at all and I'd much rather just do the whole thing myself. But then I realize how blessed I am to have so much prep time and I think about what a different experience this is from other student teachers'.
First of all, my mentor teacher is great. She's been teaching for 12 years and never had a student teacher. For 11 years she taught science and has only taught health for 1 year, so she's just beginning to be a health teacher and is still open to new ideas. Lots of student teachers are stuck with mentor teachers who are totally stuck on doing things the same way they've been doing them for the past 25 years. My mentor teacher is awesome. She lets us come up with our own unit outlines and is fine with everything as long as we follow the state standards. It's really a liberating experience as opposed to what I've heard some of my friends going through. And even though we are her first student teachers, she's been a mentor teacher for quite some time, now, and is always willing to give advice and observe and help us become better teachers.
Second of all, It's SO NICE having so much time to prepare lessons, grade papers, evaluate how certain lessons went, and make the appropriate changes so I can do better next time (when I'm on my own). What this really feels like is a 'test run' sort of semester, where I have an idea of what I want to do as a teacher and I get to test it out in the classroom every day to see if it works. I feel like this should all be part of some grand thesis or disertation and that I should be collecting data and running regressions and getting a grad degree. To tell the truth, it's actually part of the only assignment that I have to turn in for the course, called the Teacher Work Sample. Basically I have to prove that I can do what I'm doing by putting it all on paper. I just happen to be in a position where I have the time and resources to put a lot of time into improving what I've done while bringing minimal work home. Quite the blessing, really.
Third, I'm not nearly as tired as I would be if I was standing up teaching 6 lessons a day. Wow, what a piece of work I'd be coming home from that. Instead, I'm teaching just half of that at the most, and I still have energy when I come home. That's really nice.
Lastly, my fellow student teacher has had different experiences and has different ideas than I do about how to teach. At some times, I feel like this is exactly why I don't want to team teach, but in all reality I should be greatful for the different ideas that she brings to the table. I'm only one man, and I'm willing to see good ideas of how I can help kids learn the material.
Other than those things, I really can't think of another reason I wouldn't want to do it myself. But if for nothing else, those four reasons are enough to make me grateful for the experience of team teaching. Overall I can't complain. I really enjoy all the free time, especially since I'll be needing it to study for my next two Praxis exams--Biology and Social Studies.

The Stole of Gratitude

2010-08-04T10:55:00.005-06:00

I didn't even know this existed, and once I did know I didn't know what it was. When Courtney graduated she showed me this as she was buying her cap and gown:

"A stole is not a symbol of academic honor. It is an optional accessory that is worn during the commencement ceremony. After the ceremony, the new graduate presents the Stole of Gratitude to someone who provided extraordinary help or support, i.e. parents, relatives, or mentors who have helped with wisdom, words of support or financial assistance. Immediately after graduation, the graduate may take the stole from around his/her neck and place it around the neck of the recipient. More than one stole may be worn during commencement, symbolizing that there are multiple persons destined to receive a Stole of Gratitude."

She gave the stole to her father in a very emotional scene following the immensely boring graduation ceremony. Her father had a great deal to do with her academic pursuits and eventual graduation, and it was clear that before we knew what a Stole of Gratitude was, that he was destined to receive the Stole of Gratitude.

As I prepare to walk across the stage and receive my empty diploma cover from an aged professor dressed in the robes of the false priesthood it is not as clear to me to whom I would bestow a Stole of Gratitude. There have been a number of people to whom I feel indebted for the contribution they have made to my education, and no clear recipient of the Stole. Since I cannot clearly determine who should receive a Stole and I have no intention of spending $19 each a stole for each person I think of, I thought of recognizing those who have given their wisdom and words of support. These include professors, family, and maybe a friend or two.

Ray Desagun--High school economics and government teacher. At this age I was naive enough to think Libertarianism was pretty cool and that I wanted to be a speechwriter. What I gained from that class was more than just TINSTAFL, supply and demand and that Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were both Jews, but I learned that I would enjoy teaching government.

Prof. Ray Christensen--Three years ago I was writing a personal statement in his PoliSci 200 class and he and I were discussing what subject I was passionate about in political science to figure out some topics I should write about, or what I would do after I graduated or something like that. I told him that I wasn't passionate about politics or the law, but about education. He then asked me why I was majoring in PS, and I said I was interested in politics and I liked learning about it, but that I didn't like writing about it (something I got over--but not easily). That discussion stuck with me as I continued to ponder on what I would ever do with my degree. I credit my decision to teach to this one conversation, to his questioning of my plans for the future.

Prof. Legrand Richards--I took the class "Foundations of Education" at the advice of my advisor when I told her I wanted to go into education. By luck of the draw, I picked this class. We read some excellent literature and related it to education, and more importantly, teaching. The elementary education majors in this class with me were less than interested in the material, but for me it made a great impact. After going through the weekly readings I absolutely fell in love with the idea of being an educator.

Cougar Hall--He's the advisor for school health education majors, and taught the first health class I took: Sexual Education in the Curriculum. It was in the practicum class, though, that I took from him I got really excited to teach. I will be forever grateful for being introduced to The Education of Little Bear, and for the example he showed of the excitement he had for teaching. Not long ago he was a high school health teacher, and I was recently told by one of the individuals responsible for hiring him at BYU that he was the best teacher the principal at Timp High had ever seen in his 30+ years of experience. That really isn't that hard to believe. I hope I can do somewhere near as good a job as he has done in my years ahead.

Coach--My first inspiration to teach came from my dad, who has taught math for just over 20 years now. His worthiness of the Stole can be traced to his simple instruction to me as a child, "Be smart, don't fart." Such wisdom cannot be found in the lines of textbooks or even scripture. He always showed interest in my college education when I was studying political science, but since my switch to education, I've really had some good discussions about the wants and needs of the system. He has brought up many things that I want to look at and evaluate on a policy level and he has helped me grow even more interested in my ventures into education.

Courtney--When I didn't get an internship with the Utah State Legislature I looked long and hard at what I was going to do with my life and degree. I wanted to go into education policy, but after I had taken The Sociology of Education, I decided that I couldn't do so without teaching. Courtney, who had changed her graduation plans to meet mine so we would be done at the same time, was very supportive and even found the shortest teaching major for me to complete. She has been hard at work for the past year, allowing me to go to school without necessarily needing to work, and take 51 credits over the last year. I am so grateful for Courtney's help in coming to where I am today.

I guess this really turned into a 'who influenced me to be a teacher,' but that has been the motive of my education for the last two years. The work I have done in school is directly related to me wanting to teach and improve education, so anyone who influenced me in my desire to go into education is hereby a recipient of this blogStole.

A Few Random Rants

2010-07-28T06:58:00.003-06:00

This may seem a little out of place given the subjects of my previous posts, but these are some things I've thought quite a bit about recently and think they need to be said.

Skinny Jeans--I hate skinny jeans. They aren't just unflattering (on everybody), they're absolutely disgusting. It's like girls spray paint their legs in blue denim (or purple or pink, the other two most popular colors) and walk outside. The worst part of this is that you can't tell people that they don't look good in skinny jeans because it will prompt the response, "You think my body's ugly?" like I'm telling Rosanne Barr to please not wear a halter top and low riders. It's totally different, your body is not ugly, I just don't want to see every nook and curve when I see people on the street. Seriously, it's like living in a nudist colony where people spray paint their body below their abdomens and wear really baggy shirts (who comes up with these trends, anyways?). And boys--No, I'm sick of not knowing your gender until I hear you talk, and even that's not a dead giveaway. This annoys me to no end. I've never anxiously awaited the next new fad as much as I do now.
Frosted Shredded Wheat--for the record, I buy the Malt-O-Meal brand bag of Frosted Mini Scooters. I really like these things-possibly my favorite cereal. They're whole grain, they're fortified with vitamins, and one side of each mini is frosted so I feel at least half adult-half kid eating them. As you may have noticed, many products have gotten smaller over the years: McDonalds hamburgers the amount of frosting in an Oreo, and Beto's Burritto. Other products have gotten bigger: movie popcorn, pop cans, and a small order of french fries. The latter happened to frosted mini wheats. In the bag I just bought, they're all frosted like crazy! Before it was just a spattering of sugar, you know, where you can still see the wheat, but now it's fully loaded. This had terribly disrupted the half adult-half kid balance. I feel like I'm six again, drooling over a bowl of Lucky Charms or Cookie Crisp (which my mom would never buy me, and I've still never had. I think I like her cookies better anyways). It pains me to say that I may be in search of a new cereal...but there's no harm in trying one more bag.
The three conditions of bike riders riding when they aren's supposed to--under these three conditions I feel like totally broad-siding the rider. Hope you're wearing a helmet.

On campus during the ten minutes before the hour: I admit, this rule is not as known as it should be. I have seen people get ticketed, but I want to see more. People should know that if I ever, EVER, get hit by a cyclist on campus, I will take you out, then take off your front tire (as long as you have quick release locks) and throw it on the roof of the nearest building on campus (unless it's the SWKT, in which case I will roll it down the RB hill).
On the sidewalk: Taxpayers have paid for bike lanes or wide streets everywhere in this city. I know the hustle and bustle of traffic is tough, but if you'd like to use the sideWALK I suggest you WALK, not ride.
In the dark without a light: You know the worst part about this one? It's when people say excuse me to pass you on their bike on the sidewalk at night when there's a bike lane marked and you don't know they're even there because they don't have a light. And please make sure you have reflectors; I really don't want to run you over.

Cell Phones going off in class--So yesterday this cell phone went off in my class and I thought it was right next to me, but no, it was all the way across the classroom, it was just so loud Gene Simmons would even ask him to turn it down a bit. I look across and it's the really annoying kid in the class who thinks he's the professor's favorite and going to Med school, yada yada yada. Well, not only does he take forever (because he's HUGE) to realize it's his phone and get up, but as he's walking to the back of the class, he ANSWERS HIS PHONE AND STARTS TALKING. I was so mad. If I was the girl who was making her presentation I would be so offended. Heck, I was offended and I wasn't even listening to the presentation. Then he comes back in the class and starts explaining to the professor what the phone call was about, which brings me to my next point-
Useless comments in class--I absolutely hate this class because really annoying guy and a slew of others think that stories about exceptionalist chronic diseases in their families are important enough for the rest of the class to suffer through. If the doctor didn't have an answer, our professor likely won't either. So much time is wasted in this class, I feel like I'm in a Three Stooges cartoon with 37 stooges.
Overtime in school--I love overtime in sports. Unlike most people I really don't mind overtime in sacrament meeting (shorter sharing time and singing time in primary). But school is no place for overtime. If you are giving a presentation, keep it to the time allotted for it. In the class with really annoying guy, we generally have four presentations a day (because the professor insists that someone else do her job). We are each allotted 5 minutes for our presentation. Each class how long do we spend on presentations? Close to an hour and a half. Needless to say, we are two class periods behind in material and only have three left.

That's all I'm going to write now because I have to go to a nutrition class where people make comments like unto those of RAG. Luckily I have a book to read.

From a Long Telegram to the Fall of the Wall

2010-07-14T16:51:00.008-06:00

I just finished doing studying for the Cold War section of my foreign policy test. I missed the two class periods we talked about it, so I did a little extra research, and asides from learning that my professor took part of her power point presentation right off of a Wikipedia page, I found some rather interesting information from all the speeches and national security reports I read.
First of all, my generation really has no idea what life was like in the days of the Cold War. JFK's strategy included what is called Assured Destruction. This was a message sent to the USSR that if they ever ordered a nuclear attack on the States, we would still be able to retaliate with enough nuclear firepower to blow 50% of their industry and 25% of their population (50 million+) into the next life. The threat of nuclear warfare occurring in our own backyard was real like kids today have never known. The man who started it all--George Kennan, who wrote a telegram from Moscow in in 1946 cluing in America to what was going on in the Kremlin. His precise words, "If the adversary (of the USSR) has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns." In short, they aren't going to mess with a bigger dog, which advice drove up military spending, enlargement and engagement for years to come.
Kennan also gave some great advice for the American people in this telegram, namely that they remain calm and do not become emotionally unsettled, that they learn about the adversary, and that they cling to the values of society that we hold dear in America. Unfortunately the education most people received about the USSR actually turned out to be government-fed anti-communist propoganda that scared the crap out of people.
In the telegram he wrote, "It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own." Kennan argued that many countries feel that security needs trumped the need of freedom and that thay could be wooed by the guidance Soviet offered unless the United States stepped in before them. This plan to intervene in order to contain the influence of the USSR came to define the overarching strategy of foreign policy over the next 40 years. The next year in an article titled The Sources of Soviet Conduct Kennan advised "a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon he interests of a peaceful and stable world." Looking back in history, we see that the United States did just that in places like Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
While battles and bloodshed occurred in these places, the Cold War was not about military influence, it was about political influence. Since the fall of the Soviet Union things have changed. Recent miltary campaigns the US has entered in have been humanitarian missions and based on the global war on terror. These wars have, in general, been met with disapproval from the public (Somalia, Haiti, Operation Iraqi Freedom), but imagine if they were part of the strategy of containment. The villains are the same, just not ones of global influence, which is a big turn-off for most people. But when you throw in the right propoganda, the wars become a lot more palatable to the American public. If we had feared Sadaam Hussain as much as communism no would care how long we stayed there to construct the new regime. Unfortunately the Bush administration couldn't paint that picture--the real foe existed in a man named Osama Bin Laden (who doesn't lead a state against which one can really wage war). Thanks to the SALT and ABM argreements that happened late in the Cold War the world is a safer place, and it's harder to strike as much fear into the American public as it was during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
By no means do I disagree with Kennan, but I'm not sure everybody understood him. The arms race was a waste of time. Once Kennedy issued his Assured Destruction policy, we had really hit critical mass. Neither side could really justify further arming themselves, so by the time Nixon got around, he realized it was a waste and put an end to the race with the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty. We are lucky enough to live in a day when the threat of a nuclear armagedden is far from the forefront of anyone's mind. Containing the influence of the USSR through proxy wars was absolutely necessary to show them that we were committed to the cause and that they wouldn't be able to push around any larger nations without a formidable opposition. And just as Kennan said, the Soviets were driven back by force.
It's hard to say what exactly would have happened had the US approached the Soviet Union any other way. I can't honestly say I think the USSR would have fallen if not for a constant adversary, which would be why China has seen so much success with their totalitarian communist regime--they haven't had a consistant aggressor. Which brings up another question - if China really does surpass the US as the global superpower, will we have lost the Cold War? China broke relations with the USSR in the early 70s, but they still are a totalitarian government guilty of human rights violations and denying their own citizens freedoms we take for granted in the States. If that time comes, it's possible we will once again find ourselves asking, "Who lost China?" but that is a discussion for another time

Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our traditions...

2010-06-02T09:35:00.004-06:00

...ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

I went to an AA meeting as part of my Substance Abuse course. The title of this post is the 12th tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous. A good reminder to everyone that they are all alcoholics and they are all struggling, no matter how long they've been sober, whether it be 1 day, 1 week, 1 year, or 10 years. The only way to stay on the wagon is to stick with the program.

It was incredible. The part that hit me hardest, and really prepared me for what I was about to experience, was the very beginning. The moment of silence for those still struggling to tackle addiction alone really struck a chord. The people with me in the room had surrendered to the disease and were not alone on their road to recovery. I immediately thought of all the other alcoholics who were still battling their addiction alone, or maybe just succumbing to the pain of the disease, spiralling down to even lower lows. The appropriate tone was set for the rest of the meeting.

John, the meeting facilitator, had asked me before the meeting, not realizing it was my first or that I didn’t know whether or not I was an alcoholic, to read the opening statement. I gladly agreed and went ahead with the reading. I was recognized as a visitor with a few others and given a little card and a hug from the group secretary. The handing out of the chips was awesome. Another visitor who sat next to me got his 30-day chip. I thought that was really exciting. The beginning must be pretty tough, and he was really glad to have come that far. He was well dressed and carried with him a big binder of work documents, and on the outside mesh pocket, I could see more chips. This wasn’t his first thirty day chip, and it might not be his last, but every time must be a great success. The next was a six month chip to a guy my age. That was really exciting as well. Half a year—what a great accomplishment. The last chip was a one year mark by a wonderful woman who lost her children to child services a year ago when she was using cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. She got a place in drug court, started the AA program, and now she’s been sober for a year and just got custody of her kids back. This was really exciting. Most people there knew here and congratulated her on her great work. I felt so happy for her.

The rest of the meeting I really just felt happy. The reading from the big book was in chapter one, and then people shared their experiences with the group. Because the chapter focused on Bill W’s road to alcoholism, most people talked about how similar their own stories were to Bill’s. You just substitute their name with Bill’s or Manhattan on the rocks with bathtub gin and it was their story. One man was the designated driver for some friends of his, and they were going out that night and he told them, “I’ll catch up to you later, I think I can still catch a meeting.” What an awesome social network for people who need help. As I searched for a meeting to go to I found so many options, and I’m so glad I found the one I did and got to hear and meet the people I did.

John was the last one to share, and what he said was this: “Tomorrow would have been my five year mark. I got to that fourth year and thought it was going to be smooth sailing to five years. Relapse does happen.” I felt so badly for him. He was so disappointed with himself, it seemed like he was angry that he let himself relapse. It must be hard. One of the men there announced that he was three days sober, and we were as excited for him as we were for any of the people who just got a chip. Every day sober is a great achievement because the disease they carry has ravaged their entire life and they continually need support not to get caught up in their past.

I left feeling so happy for everyone there. I wanted to be a part of the group, I wanted to make the achievements they were making and support others who were progressing, but I know that I cannot. The time came when John asked for volunteers who have completed the twelve steps to raise their hands to show others who they can talk to about being a sponsor for their own recovery. I realized then that I could never be able to help the way they can help each other. I felt so good, yet sad that I could never go back. I don’t have anything that I can really share with them. I can’t help them, yet they make me feel so good. That night I prayed for each of the people I met by name and thanked God for the wonderful experience of having met them.

Len Bias

2010-05-27T18:44:00.005-06:00

Many people today do not recognize the name Len Bias. When I say that, I mean most people who are younger than 40 and perhaps some of the people older than that who were old enough at the time to recognize what happened to him but have forgotten him over the years. I think it's enough to say that he has been generally forgotten, yet his impact as monumental as it can be as a college basketball player.

So who was Len Bias? Len Bias played basketball for the University of Maryland. In 1986 he won the ACC Male Athlete of the Year-an award won by Michael Jordon two years earlier. In fact, his name was often said in the name breath as MJ's (remember, Jordon was only a youngster, he wasn't yet what he is now). The fact is, though, he could have been.

Well, what happened, then? He was drafted by the Boston Celtics with the #2 overall pick. He was about to go play with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge, Robert Parrish and an aging Bill Walton, who had just won the NBA finals, and would lose the next year to the Lakers. But two days after the draft he went out with some friends and never lived to see the next day.
The killer--cocaine. Today when we hear that someone OD'd on cocaine what do we say? "He had it coming to him," "Didn't he know that drugs kill," and "How irresponsible." Do you know why we say these things? Because of LEN BIAS.

Nobody knew how dangerous drugs were--or that they were even harmful, really--until Len Bias died. No one said "He had it coming to him," or "Didn't he know that drugs kill," or "How irresponsible," because no one was under the impression that drugs had that type of effect on the body. Until a perfectly healthy super-human athlete died people were unaware of how thin line drug abuse actually was to walk. The Celtics' GM said about drug use, "The dangers were not as clear then as they were the day after he died." The death of Len Bias revealed to the nation the dangers of cocaine, and the inquiry as to the dangers of other illicit drugs. This is the positive influence of his death. People began to realize that they couldn't play around with drug use, that it could kill you. As the graph shows, a spike appears in the years directly following Len Bias' death (1987-). Drug use significantly dropped as a result of a higher risk perception.

I don't know exactly why risk perception went down again and why drug use went up, but I do know that most children are educated that drugs are addictive, harmful to your health, and can ruin your life. This is at least partially a result of the aftermath of the death of Len Bias. I don't know, maybe the story no longer hits a soft spot in anyone today. Every drug related death we see we ask those quesions I posed earlier, and the people who still take the chance seem to believe that it could never happen to them. People are unsure as whether or not that was Len's first try at cocaine, but it's very likely that he had not used much before, and he most likely didn't remotely think he would be dead from using it that night. It's not just the heavy users that are at risk, it's the casual, social users, and it could even be the first timers.

Here's the link to the first youtube installment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHFUUkrg2VA

Why Avatar did not win Best Picture

2010-05-14T14:26:00.006-06:00

I finally saw Avatar last weekend, and that is why this is not a very timely subject. If I would have seen Avatar in the theaters I would have titled this "Why Avatar will not win Best Picture."

BIG DISCLAIMER: Of the 50 award winning films for best picter since 1960, I have seen just 12. That's 24%, not a lot. I have seen just 52 of the ~250 nominated films, verifying that I have seen about 20% of the best films of the past 50 years. This also discounts my ability as a film critic, so don't take this as some professional opinion, it's just my uninformed opinion.
Like I was saying, Avatar was never in position to win Best picture. I liked the movie, I liked the premise, the politicalization of the film, cinematography, whatever, it was a good movie. As I left the theater, though, I realized that I had seen this movie before. In fact, the movie that Avatar mirrors won the Academy Award for best picture back in 1990-Dances With Wolves. Let's compare the two

Avatar
-Man goes to a faraway planet to take a job
-Man befriends the native people, is loved by them and pairs off with one of them
-The people the man works for decide to destroy the natives' home and the man is seen as having betrayed his own people
-Man leads redemption attack against his people and wins
-Lives forever as leader of the natives on the faraway planet

Dances With Wolves
-Man is stationed in the middle of nowhere as a fort for the Union
-Man is lonely, befriends the natives, becomes one of them and pairs off with one of them
-While he is living with them the Union comes to his fort and expand operations; in a return visit he is taken prisoner
-Natives attack the Union wagon transporting the man and free him
-Lives on the run because, as we know, the natives got kicked around for years until we found the most desolate parts of the nation to send them there to build casinos.

Another movie built on this same premise wasn't even nominated for Best Picture (The Last Samurai, 2003), but thanks to James Cameron, blue people and not hiring Tom Cruise, Avatar was nominated. I actually like The Last Samurai better than Avatar, and I liked DWW better than the both of them. You know why? For the same reason DWW won and Avatar did not- the guy you root for--the one who is superiorly overmatched by the antagonist--loses. Think DWW. Think Rocky. If your hero loses, yet lives, and you leave the theater in tears, then you've really done something there, and that's what we're talking about in in those two examples. With Avatar, though, the impropable had to happen in order to make the movie worth it, because if the blue people would have lost, I probably would have thought, "Well, they didn't really have a chance because you don't mess with Stephen Lang, I mean, did you see him as Stonewall Jackson in Gods and Generals?" This was a fantasy movie, and fantasy doesn't win unless it features hairy feet and a Dick Cheney look-alike (See LOTR-2003). So that's my reason. It was based on an old theme but adjusted for the audience to see the good guys win even though they had absolutely no chance.

Drug Court

2010-05-07T14:41:00.002-06:00

The Utah justice system has an arrangement called drug court that acts as a substitution for probation and prison time. The program takes one year and the individuals go through detoxification, substance abuse programs, drug education classes, community service and continual drug testing. If at any point the defendant tests positive for drugs preceding a regular court date they will be removed from the program and placed in prison. The defendants could also face minimal prison time for failing to report for work diversion or not finding work while in the program. The program is a huge success, boasting just a 10% recidivism rate of those who graduate, compared to 70% of drug offenders outside the program.
I know all this because I am in a substance use and addictive behavior class right now. As a requirement for a 'field experiment' half the class went to drug court today. I'll tell you what, I didn't think I'd see a couple people I actually knew. First my uncle came in escorting the chain gang from Bluffdale (The defendant sitting behind me said that he was a pretty cool guy, but that his partner was a goon). Three walked in, one got released, yet three still left. One of the defendants failed his drug test, and was sentanced. Go to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. These people walk a thin line, but for anyone who has felt the strong arms of addiction, it's all part of the game.
Leaders in the church do a great job at describing addiction. James E Faust said, "Some addictions can control us to the point where they take away our God-given agency. One of Satan’s great tools is to find ways to control us. Consequently, we should abstain from anything that would keep us from fulfilling the Lord’s purposes for us, whereby the blessings of eternity may hang in jeopardy. We are in this life for the spirit to gain control over the body rather than the other way around." Addictive behavior changes the way the body functions by creating a chemical imbalance in and structurally changing the brain. The effects of this create a dependency on the drug not just to experience a high, but to support normal body function. In effect, living by someone else's rules is no new thing for addicts, they are controlled by drugs just as much as by the justice system.
The other person I knew there was the brother of a friend of mine. I had met him only a couple of times and he's a nice kid, but he made some bad decisions, as you probably guessed when I mentioned that I saw him at drug court. His was the first case to be heard. I recognized his name when it was called and watched as the judge applauded his good efforts and sent him on his way. Many others went up and tested negative for drugs for the week, so they were given some praise, words of encouragement and another court date. It's good to see that people are progressing, that they're taking the right steps. I know his brother cares for him and wants him to make better choices with his life. It's gotta be hard to see someone you love fall to addictive behavior and have such a tough time getting out. Words from President Faust, "Any kind of addiction inflicts a terrible price in pain and suffering, and it can even affect us spiritually. However, there is hope because most addictions can over time be overcome. We can change, but it will be difficult." The road is not easy and it cannot be trekked alone. Outside the church they refer to it as a Higher Power, but in the church's 12-step program, it specifically says you need faith in Jesus Christ to help you overcome the bonds of addiction.
I'm glad that the justice system has found a way to increase successful rehabilitation of drug offenders and I hope its success (particularly in the recidivism department) will influence lawmakers to throw a little more money in that direction. It's an investment worth making.

The Real Blindside of Blindside

2010-04-13T21:44:00.006-06:00

I recently saw the movie The Blindside and thought it was great. Loved the story, the football (the coaches, more specifically), loved it. Today in my professor's end of semester lecture she used a report on the real story of The Blindside to teach the importance of being resilient and dreaming big. When I saw this again, I really stopped to think about what really happened. A wealthy family saw a poor kid in their private school who had no parents or home and showed him the most Christlike love possible. This kid had a GPA of 0.4 when he was enrolled into the private school and could not participate in sports of any kind, much less feel competent enough to be at such a school.
What is the lesson that is being shown us in this movie? When we look past Sandra Bullock's blonde hair and the cute kid who portrays SJ we can see a bold reality in America's school system. Despite what the message of the movie seems to be, wealthy people want nothing to do with poor kids being in their schools. Lets face it, the really rich will put their kids in a private school protected from the children of parents of lesser socioeconomic status. Those who can't afford that make sure to buy a house in an affluent neighborhood where property taxes are good enough to make a school up to their standards. Those who can't afford such real estate settle for whatever they get.
There are other students like Michael. Maybe not all of them without a change of clothes, maybe not all of them homeless, maybe not all of them lacking parents or guardians, but they're still in rough shape and they're still in equally deserving need of love and kindness. They have just as much right to the opportunities a good education provides.
A more cynical account (my first reaction to this realization, actually) would remark that maybe if we put more poor/disadvantaged kids in private schools they could actually receive help from others, but until they are seen they do not exist. There is no more Christlike example of love than that which the Tuohy family exemplified in their kind gesture. What this movie tells me, however, is that no one will help if those needing help are not forced into their environment. And even then those who help will likely be ostracized/criticized/judged by others, just as Leigh Ann was in her lunch group. That's the cynical account.
I have calmed down since then, though, and found the root of the problem, and it's not in where we live. The wealthy can live in gated communities and send their kids to private schools, that's fine. The middle class can move into whatever subdivision/community they care for, that's fine. We can't go around blaming each other for the inequality and injustice that exists in the world/nation/education system--nobody feels good when they're being blamed for something and they're most likely to refuse to cooperate. The answer lies in how this movie made us feel and how the Tuohy's feel. Because this feeling about helping others is what lies beneath education policies and the people behind them.
Now don't get me wrong, there's not a policy in the world that will do what the Tuohy's did for Michael Oher--under these circumstances only the most charitable acts of kindness and love can resolve their unfortunate situation. In Michael's case, as in many others, what is needed most is a loving parent who cares for the child and motivates the child to excel in school and in life. Where parents are present but this attitude isn't, students are just as likely to fall through the cracks.
As you have probably correctly thought to yourself, What can we do to change a parent's attitude? Well, I'm sure programs are out there, and some of them may even work, but on the whole they probably aren't that effective. While I don't think we can make everyone's situation better overnight through education funding reform I do think that there are measures that can be taken to give children a less damning sentence when they walk into their first grade classroom. Say what you will, but funding for schools based on local property taxes has brought about 'Savage Inequalities" that are the "Shame of the Nation" to use the words of Jonathan Kozol. Starting kids off in low-quality schools represents a bleak future, no different than their situation at home, that will follow them for their entire life.
So yes, I'm calling for equal funding for schools on a state level. I know that the recipie for capitalism calls for some to win, some to lose, but must some be born to sing the blues? Blaming the parents gives us a scapegoat, but while goats make us feel more self-assured about ourselves the children remain disadvantaged. And a goat does nothing for a disadvantaged child.
I mentioned earlier that the answer lies in the way people felt as they watched the film. What people felt as they saw the kindness of the Tuohy's change Michael's life is not conducive to the founding priniciples of this country despite our open practice of capitalism and less-open history of corruption.
Giving children an equal shot at education certainly qualifies as an effort to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. 'We the people'-although written by the educated elite of a young America-does not strictly refer to them only. It refers to all of us and each other's posterity. It is unconcerned with the education level, socioeconomic status and first language of the parent. It is the root of the American Dream as first defined by James Truslow Adams as one's ability to succeed in "attaining the fullest stature of which (he) is innately capable, and be recognized for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous cirumstances of birth or position." This is the culture of America, and it is the driving force behind the idea of providing free, appropriate public education to every child in the nation. And if the government is going to provide a service to its people, it should do so if not with the intent of providing an equally good service to each individual, at least an equally funded one.
So there's the real Blindside. I enjoyed the beginning of the movie when Sandra Bullock walks you through LT ending Joe Theismann's career. Sooner or later the huge disparity in education is going to sack us, but who knows whent that will be. Until then we can look past it blaming the parents, teachers and curriculum.

The Eye of the Tornado

2010-04-12T19:33:00.002-06:00

Today I walk in the eye of the tornado. Soon I'll pass through and get caught in the whirlwind once again. I had quite the week getting in two 12+ page papers and another couple of big assignments that took a lot of time putting together. And today I breathe. But not for long. Three finals and a final draft of my capstone paper will keep me busy for the next week. Not to mention working a few soccer games and going back to the MC.

Jaime Escalante

2010-04-04T16:32:00.003-06:00

For those of you who have never seen Stand and Deliver, you really ought to. Jaime Escalante took a job to teach math in an Los Angeles high school that was failing state standards back in the early 80s. He believed the kids would rise to the expectations of their teachers an offered a calculus class for students so they could take the AP exam. I highly reccomend this film to anyone who hasn't watched it. A couple of weeks ago I watched it while I was doing my homework and found myself welling up with tears at the end, just like every other time (except the time I watched it my Freshman year in Spanish class. No place for tears there).
This past week Jaime Escalante died as a result of bladder cancer that he had been fighting for some time now. We have lost a great teacher, but his legacy will continue as long as there are teachers out there who stretch the potential of their students and help them realize that they have the ganas to succeed. I doubt I'll end up in a High school comparable to that of Escalante's, and because I don't teach a subject matter that anyone cares about taking a standardized test for, I won't ever be praised for raising test scores. But the impact Mr. Escalante made on his students wasn't just that they got a couple of college credits. He changed the entire reason his students were there at school. Every year more and more kids took calculus from him and more and more kids passed the AP exam. He changed the culture of the school into one where students saw what they could become and had the ganas to be more than people on the outside believed they could be.

Blessing from God

2010-03-11T18:19:00.002-07:00

I have a class from 3:30 to 6:00 every Thursday. Next Thrusday, as we all know, is the first day of the 64 team NCAA tournament. The first of two days of 16 win-or-go-home basketball games, and I have a two and a half hour class in the late afternoon. Why do I bring this up? Because my professor announced that he will be out of the state and we will not have class next week. Now that's what I call a blessing.

The Brother of Benito

2010-03-07T16:38:00.003-07:00

I have been so overhauled with boring schoolwork that I can't think of anything good to write about. So I'm posting some old stories I wrote.

I met the brother of Benito in Rockdale, Texas, and honestly, if it wasn't for my journals, I'd have no idea what his name was today. I wrote this during cherry season 2007 using everything I could remember about the guy plus a bit of fiction to make it interesting. When my dad read it, he told me, "I felt like taking a bath in a mixture of clorox and Republican campaign rhetoric after reading it." This one is just sad. His brother Benito, however, was a nutcase of a different variety. Enjoy.

The days and nights are one to the brother of Benito. He looks in the mirror and sees a grown man’s life in shambles. For this reason, he doesn’t look in the mirror too much anymore. In fact, all existing mirrors are shattered from occasional bouts of anger and violence. “But I don’t blow gaskets too much these days. I’m too tired.” If he were to look at himself, he’d see one big, hairy tired Native American. “These days I tip the scales at 305 plus or minus a few Big Macs. As a matter of fact, I could go for one of them about now- have any spare change?” He’s currently unemployed- “But I just applied at the ALCOA for one of them boiler room jobs.” If collective bargaining talks are still going raw the union down there at the coal mine is going on strike next week- he’ll be hired as a scab. There better not be a dress and grooming code. He’s long overdue for a haircut. It’s black and nappy, down past his shoulders, and streaks of silver like lightning bolts show his age. The messy array of darkness provides a solemn background for his lined face- which is shaped with the dignity of a Sioux chief, but screams with emptiness through his well traveled eyes. They tell us a story we’re afraid to hear- the type no one wants to hear. Which explains why he won’t look at himself in the mirror.

Gentlemen, have yourself a seat. Do you know why I get up in the morning? I can’t for the life of me figure out why it is that I drag myself out from under the covers just to see daylight. It’s not like I slept at all the night before. You know those nights when you can’t get to sleep no matter what you try? You put on more covers; you take them all off; you hug a pillow; you get a glass of water; you go to the bathroom; you get a glass of water just so you can go to the bathroom again- and you’re still lying there without a snowflake’s chance in hell at going to sleep. Gentlemen, that’s every night for me. Every lonely night.
The most disturbing part is how tired I am. It’s like I just finished shoveling two tons of manure and I take a shower, but the stink just won’t go. Even if I use Dove.
It’s like I have weights. I feel weighted down on my shoulders. Weights in my head, weights pressing down on every part of y body. And I’m a grown man, you see, I have a big body. So that’s a lot of weight. And after some time all that weight gets to feeling really heavy, you understand? And I know I’m a big man- used to be a strong man, too, but after years and years of shoveling manure I ain’t worth a crap. I’ve become weak. I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore out of shame for the story my eyes tell me every time they look at me. Ashamed at the state of affairs my life is in. It’s ugly. I’m ugly.
Gentlemen, this all began when I finished working for Cal Johnson. And when I say ‘finished’, I mean threw out my back and couldn’t do no more hard labor. Cal’s a good man. I started working for him in the seventh grade, getting paid under the table for work at his lumber yard. Well, I suppose, it was my fault for never asking, but all these years he just kept paying me cash, and I just kept working. I didn’t mind not having to share my hard earned money with Uncle Sam, but what I didn’t consider was that one day I’d be hauling half a redwood tree on my back and I’d hear one of them “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” Rice Krispies commercials from my spine. I figure that tree was smashed on top of me for a good ten minutes before they got enough forklifts over to lift it off of me. But like I was saying, I got paid under the table.
Gentlemen, do you know what happens when you get hurt at work and you’re being paid under the table? You don’t work. And when you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Gentlemen, I got hurt, therefore I did not work- nor was I paid, as you might have put together on your own. Now, there are many things a man can do when he cannot provide for his family by working under the table for Cal Johnson at his lumber mill. He could request workman’s compensation. He could start collecting Social Security. He could steal- or even go in professionally and be a thief. He could go down to the welfare office and request food stamps. He could donate plasma for $30 like a starving college student. He could sell drugs. He could lean back on some investments from ten years ago. Or he could start buying and selling on the stock market- or if he lived in California, the real estate market. Or he could start internet gaming by entering in online poker tournaments. Or even better, he could move to Vegas and bet against the odds laying it down on the parlays. All great ideas, all reasonable, respectable and rememberable ways to provide for a family. But I did none of them. No, this pain in my back is so devilishly excruciating that I would lie in bed all day in serious pain. We’re talking about pain so violent it’ll make you bite through steel beams. But even when the pain subsided and the Valium and the Vicodin and the Morphine cooled me down, that weight started coming down on me.
That weight, it’s the shame of not being able to provide for ones family. It’s the worry of causing a financial burden for my 78-year old crippled mother. It’s the hopelessness of returning to full health. It’s the embarrassment of how my wife handled the situation. My father always told me to never let my woman make the decisions in my home; since I was the man of the house it was my responsibility to make sure my family was in the best of care. Gentlemen, as the head of my family I have always placed myself in front of my wife and children-- that I might break the barriers of the perplexing world and pull us through to safety. Of course, some days I’d come home from work just exhausted, or from the bar swerved beyond belief, and incapable of maintaining full consciousness. In such cases I delegated all responsibility to my mother, with whom we have lived since we got back from our honeymoon at a KOA outside of Detroit. Even though I was under the influence of medication strong enough to sedate an elephant for two years, and hallucinated so much I now have a complete understanding of lyrics to Pink Floyd songs, I felt that as long as I laid off the bottle I would be in fine shape to make executive decisions for my family. My wife, however, thought I needed some help and came to me with some ideas.
First she suggested that I sell the pharmaceuticals my doctor prescribed to me. I had to object to that idea. At that humiliating time in my life, those were my lifeline; they kept me strong enough to open my eyes and see the light of the next day. She called me selfish. I couldn’t even raise my hand to slap the ho, but thought ill of her for suggesting that I put myself through such agonizing pain without the assistance of medication. Then I thought of how selfish I was for not making such a sacrifice. I would see how long I could go without a pill, but give in when my back cried like a lost dog in wan for its master.
Her next idea was that she use the morphine to make dope and sell it on the side, while I could still use it for medicinal purpose. That was unacceptable. See, gentlemen, my Uncle Jerry was a great ball player back in high school. He had no scholarship offers his senior year, because he was dumber than a box of rocks. So he thought about skipping the whole college thing and going pro after graduating. Well, his grades were lower than required for one to graduate at Dupont High School, and he did not get to walk with the rest of his classmates, or wear that silly looking hat. And come June, there were no NBA teams looking his way for a good shooting guard. But Jerry, he loved basketball more than he loved his mamma, and almost as much as he loved his mamma’s grits. That young dreamer went and moved up to Canada to play ball in some CBA league that starting up that year. Everything looked good for him. He had gone through the process of getting a physical, and was shooting some free throws when a tall bald French Canadian came up to him with some less than satisfying news. As it turns out, the league had a substance abuse policy, and in his urine they found traces of every cheap drug you can find on the streets of Toronto. Jerry told them he had a poppy seed muffin for breakfast. The team trainer took my bloodshot-eyed uncle out to his car, parked perpendicular to the painted stalls, explaining to him that poppy seeds wouldn’t really cause them to find traces of methamphetamine. My uncle’s addiction to drugs lost him his dream of being a professional basketball star. I wasn’t about to sell my medication- which were being used in a perfectly legal way- to some schmo ruining his life of opportunity the way my uncle did.
And no matter how many times my wife asked, I always told her that I would not collect Social Security or any government handout of any sort. Being a Native American, I feel that I’ve already intruded enough on the white man, being in his country and forcing him to put aside the most ugly and barren pieces of land in between the Atlantic and Pacific for me and my people. My father left the reservation in rebellion to accepting a government gift, and I’ve lived my own life with the same self-reliant attitude. So that mean no Social Security, no food stamps, no welfare. It’s said that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Well gentlemen, it can be said that I refuse to be fed by the hand that beat me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I married a good woman. I’ve been satisfied with the children she’s brought into the world. And we’ve brought them up as well as we could. I might wear the pants, but the legs wouldn’t move without her help. But in this, our most recent (for there have been many), most desperate (for many times have we been desperate) time of need, she used poor judgment in finding a solution. That woman has gone a-whoring, selling herself to every Tom, Dick and Harry who rolls down his window.
Gentlemen, do you know how much it hurts when one you’ve loved for so many years and called your own sells herself to others in order to support your family? It’s demoralizing. It’s plain out immoral. And it’s killing my morale. So I can’t work and my wife turns into a prostitute. For some reason it makes sense to her. She needed income badly, and the hours of street walking work around the kids’ schedules quite well. And what’s worse, is that my 15-year old daughter is now growing up with it enveloped around her, going down the same path, soon to become part of the abomination that her whore of a mother has started. No one should have to see this. I can’t bear to sit back and watch, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.
She took all five kids in the Geo Metro and went to stay at her parents’ house. They live comfortably in a trailer home a block away. My mother’s house is a two bedroom house built in the late 1800’s by two drunk farmhands, who obviously didn’t have a level on hand, and were cutting costs of production by using nails sparingly. It had been a tight squeeze, the seven of us and my mother, but our youngest is five, it’s been crowded for a long time. The reason she left is because she couldn’t stand seeing me as the slouch of a husband I am. And I can’t complain because I’m not being the father I want my four sons to see and become.
When a pregnant dog sees that it will not be able to provide for its young because of its own malnourishment, they’ll jump in front of a car and kill itself rather than suffer its young to live and suffer with it. Gentlemen, I feel like a pregnant dog.

My Bad

2010-02-24T10:04:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry, I meant to say Ryan Miller is THE BEST goalie in the game. I always believed that they could win as long as Miller got hot, I just didn't think he would.

Hockey Time in Canada

2010-02-11T09:49:00.003-07:00

Let's just get this out of the way first--American hockey sucks. The only players I can name on the Olympic team are Ryan Miller who is one of the top keeps in the game Joe Pavelski who plays for my favorite team, the San Jose Sharks, who are sending seven players to Vancouver (including both goalies). They'd likely send more, but 14 of their 23 players on the roster are from Canada. The Sharks sent their stars Marleau, Thorton, Heatly and Boyle to the team, but players such as Ryan Clowe, Devin Setoguchi and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, while good players that would start for the US, were left off Canada's Olympic roster. Why? Because Canada has assembled what could possibly be the best Olympic team since the Edmonton Oilers of the 80's (who never participated in the Olympics, but probably could have beaten any one country's team).
Aside from the best players from the currently best team in the Western Conference, Canada has Sidney Crosby, which should probably seal their fate for a gold right now. I could go on naming forwards such as Rick Nash, Jerome Iginla, Mike Richards Steve Stamkos and Patrice Bergeron, or a defense studded by Scott Niedermeyer and Chris Pronger, but what's more amazing is the lineup of goalies. Martin Brodeur, Marc-Andre Fleury and Roberto Luongo. Even the Russians will have a hard time putting the goal in that net.
Hockey legend Don Cherry says team Canada has to win. "There is no question, we can't settle for silver." With that lineup, I have to agree. They can't settle for silver, and definitely not for another 7th like in Torino. They're biggest challenge will be Russia, which better be the final, because their's nothing in hockey as exciting as a Crosby-Ovechkin battle (except a Sharks-Ducks game--by the way, I wonder if Thorton and Getzlaf will start a fight on the bench 2 seconds into the game like they did in Game 6 of the playoffs last year).
In other exciting Olympic hockey news, I just thought that this list of players still on their team's rosters would be amusing to anyone who knows anything about hockey.
Russia- Sergei Federov 40 years old
Czek Rep.- Jaromir Jagr 38 years old
Sweden- Nicklas Lidsrom 39 years old, Peter Foresberg 36 years old
Finland- Teemu Selanne 39 years old

The State of our Union aka Obama's Plans for the Country

2010-01-28T00:33:00.002-07:00

It took him 7,390 words interrupted by 91 applauses and a dozen or so laughter breaks. That’s applause ever 739 words or so. Try watching your favourite TV show like that. Anyways, here is a long list of things he said and some ideas I had when I read them. No, I did not waste my time watching it. I read it and computed the information.
"The toughest (letters) to read are those written by children, asking why they have to move from their home, asking when their mom or dad will be able to go back to work."
Simple answer: Not my fault; it’s the invisible hand of the economy leading us through the consequences of poor business practices
"For these Americans and so many others, change has not come fast enough"
I can’t stand the entitlement generation
"They don't understand why... Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems."
That’s not how we roll in this Country. If the free market makes a mistake, the free market should fix it.
"It's time the American people get a government that matches their decency, that embodies their strength."
(APPLAUSE)
Applaud that? Do we really want/need a government that acts on every whim and fancy of the spoiled American people of the entitlement generation who know nothing about economics or fiscal or monetary policy? I submit a heck no.
"Now, let me repeat: We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses."
(APPLAUSE) (7th)
When those working families finally will see the effects of those tax cuts, they won’t notice them or remember that Obama told them that he did it. Talking about tax cuts is stupid—for 20 years things have been pretty much the same (yes, ever since Reaganomics)
"The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act."
(APPLAUSE) (13th)
"That's right, the Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus bill."
(APPLAUSE) (14th)
I’m glad he mentioned this, actually. At a time when the government looks absolutely stagnant, he reminds us that once upon a time they actually passed a bill and the measures of the bill were carried out, proving that when the government actually does pass a bill, those parts of the bill actually do come to pass.
"jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010, and that's why I'm calling for a new jobs bill tonight."
(APPLAUSE) (15th)
‘Oh yeah, I think a bill about jobs would be good, yeah, that’s a good idea. Whaddaya say, congress? You think that’s a good idea?’
"So tonight, I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat."
(APPLAUSE) (18th)
‘Yeah, that money I talked about earlier that we recovered to pay for the bailout—let’s spend it. We’re already in a hole of debt that reaches to China (no joke), so no one even thinks we have a chance at recovering the budget deficit. If it gets too bad, we can fake a manned landing to Mars and borrow money from the Martian colony we discover’
"Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps."
(APPLAUSE) (25th)
But didn’t you just say you wanted one?
"People are out of work. They're hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay."
(APPLAUSE) (27th)
But you just said...
"But -- but the truth is, these steps won't make up for the 7 million jobs that we've lost over the last two years."
THEN WHY DO YOU WANT THEM IN THE JOBS BILL?
"You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China's not waiting to revamp its economy; Germany's not waiting; India's not waiting."
China’s also not doing anything about human rights and India’s not doing anything about ethnic violence and a class system that makes the people hurt worst in our recession look like the beneficiaries of a bull market. But you know, it’s all about priorities.
"These nations, they're not standing still. These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.
Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America."
(APPLAUSE) (29th)
I honestly don’t think we’ve been playing for ‘second place,’ and you failed to mention which of these nations were in first, what they were in first of, and how being in first would raise our quality of life. But then again, if you said all of these things it would make for a very boring, yet extremely informative and relevant speech.
"Even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future, because the nation that leads the clean-energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy, and America must be that nation."
(APPLAUSE) (36th)
This is true. Actually, come to think about it, it’s not the first time the government has scared people in one way or another in order to create a new market in the economy to spur growth and job creation. It’s actually a good idea. If I were counting good ideas, I’d be at what, 2, now? And people have clapped 36 times already?
"we need to export more of our goods.
(APPLAUSE) (37th)
"Because the more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America. So...
(APPLAUSE) (38th)
"So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support 2 million jobs in America."
(APPLAUSE) (39th)
A bold goal, and trust me, this is something we’ll hang over his head this time next year when it’s not done. Why won’t it get done? STUPID SUBSIDIES FOR CORN AND SUGAR THAT WON’T GET REPEALED IN THE EFFORT TO INCREASE EXPORTS
"And that's why we'll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, and Panama, and Colombia."
(APPLAUSE) (42nd)
No one has a clue what he’s talking about. Any American who watches the Olympics or the World Cup hates the South Korea, and 25% of America think it’s the same as North Korea. 70% of Americans probably are wondering if he just legalized cocaine, too.
"In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education."
(APPLAUSE) (43rd)
The global average of years of educational instruction is 6.2 years. In the States we top the list at 12. In the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science study, the United States ranks 9th in a study of 48 countries, although only five countries have a statistically higher score than us: Chinese Taipei, Rep. of Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan. Does the theory about education preventing poverty hold?
Per capita GDP (CIA factbook)
#17 US 46,900
#24 Singapore 39,500
#25 Japan 38,700
#29 Hong Kong 30,700
#40 South Korea 19,600
#43 Republic of China (Taiwan) 17,100
Granted there are other factors to this, we just got fed a crock.
"And in this country, the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential."
But it doesn’t, it depends on how much the property around where you live is worth.
"To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let's take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants."
(APPLAUSE) (44th)
Students know it’s better to go to college. While a lot don’t go because they can’t afford it, I think most who think they can’t afford it don’t know that they can get help already. And let’s face it, kids hate school and think 12 years is enough and they need a ‘break’, but don’t know that the odds of going to college after taking a break is low.
"no one should go broke because they chose to go to college."
(APPLAUSE) (45th)
Well, no one should major in anthropology, English or organ performance.
"And it is precisely to relieve the burden on middle-class families that we still need health insurance reform."
(APPLAUSE) (47th)
Middle class families could probably afford health care if they A) lived within their needs B) didn’t smoke C) didn’t drink and D) got regular exercise. I recognize that it’s a problem for a lot of people who do these four things, too, but today’s middle class is quite stratified, maybe I refer to the upper middle class.
"But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.
(APPLAUSE) (52nd)
"Let me know. Let me know."
(APPLAUSE) (53rd)
Maybe the status quo is the best approach for a people who cringe at tax hikes and don’t like more equality-based (howbeit more bureaucratic) approaches such as those in Canada, Britain and France.
"Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit,"
BS. And everybody knows it, that’s why no one applauded.
"Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't. And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will."
(APPLAUSE) (58th)
BS. Show me a Congressperson who ever lived in a cash-strapped family that lived within a budget and I’ll show you a thousand Americans cash-strapped families that are that way because they don’t live within a budget.
"But at a time of record deficits, we will not continue tax cuts for oil companies, for investment fund managers, and for those making over $250,000 a year. We just can't afford it."
(APPLAUSE) (60th)
So they won’t have any money to hire you.
"So I'll issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans."
(APPLAUSE) (62nd)
An executive order to make a great leap forward? Who is this, Chairman Mao?
"That's why, for the first time in history, my administration posts our White House visitors online."
Well, whadday know, Michaele and Tareq Salahi...
"The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away."
Do they really?
"We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment, to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more."
(APPLAUSE) (91st)
There was a lot of rhetoric at the end. He should have said “Carpe diem!” and pointed his finger to the sky, then tapped two fingers over heart twice, touched his lips and given the peace sign. You know what this country needs? A home run chase! I know it’s tainted by steroids, but whatever, it was so exciting, and everybody got into it, and life was great. Steroids saved baseball, and they can save our country, too.

Teaching by Living

2010-01-19T23:35:00.004-07:00

Granpa gives a lot of good advice to Little Tree throughout this book, but he treats wisdom with more than mere lip service. I noticed in the chapter on church-going and in other spots in the reading that Granpa regularly practices what he preaches. He showed the man how to make the chair that he gave to him. Little Tree explained that Granpa always believed that showing a feller how to do something himself was better than just giving to him.
As teachers we must practice what we teach. Do I put on a mask when I go into the classroom that smiles and loves the students? This actually seems easy enough, but soon the act would grow old and we would seek a different line of work. The type of teachers we want to be in the classroom should also be the type of people we want to be in our homes and relationships. Especially as health teachers, we should be an example of healthy living. We shouldn't get plastered on the weekends or take up chain smoking to cope with the stress of being a teacher. We should live a physically active life and wear a seatbelt and wash our hands and cough into our elbows. Teaching health isn't just presenting curriculum, it's presenting a healthy way of life. As members of the church are admonished to be living examples of the blessings of the gospel and testify of those blessings and from whence they came, we as health teachers should be shining examples of the healthy way of life we teach and advocate a healthy way of life to our students.

The Day China was Bathed in Red

2010-01-15T12:07:00.005-07:00

On October 1, 1949 Chairman Mao stood at the Forbidden City and announced the establishment of the People's Republic of China. As I've been reading Jan Wong's book Red China Blues I've come to a greater understanding of Maoist China. Wong grew up in a suburb of Montreal during the sixties and went to China at the age of 19 as a tourist in 1972. During her visit she was accepted into Beijing University for a year long stay. As a foreigner she was treated both with respect and distrust. She had grown to love Mao and his thought as an activist in Montreal and enjoyed taking part in the height of the cultural revolution, even if it did mean snitching on possible counterrevolutionary classmates and working in a factory and a field to experience manual labor and thought reform. When she went home, she still felt incredibly bourgeoisie.
Wong graduated from McGill then returned to China and enrolled again at Beijing University, where she graduated in Chinese History ten months after the death of the Great Helmsman. Along with the rest of her class Wong experienced months of physical labor and malnourishment while in school. After graduation she got a job with the New York Times Beijing office. After the Cultural Revolution fell apart and she threw away her Mao goggles it was easier for her to see the numerous human rights issues and every blemish in the system. She and her husband (an American draft dodger) moved to the States where she went to Columbia to get a masters (he got a Ph.D. in Physics from NYU). Eight years later she returned to China covering for the Montreal Mail and Globe. No better timing for a journalist.
The day mentioned in the title did not refer to the coronation ceremony of Red China in 1949. Rather the end put to the mass protests for regime change and democracy surrounding the death of an heir, and the Sino-Soviet summit attended by Mikhail Gorbachev. When asked what he would do about the protests, the Russian responded, "I would use democracy to resolve this confrontation." Deng Xiaoping responded with Martial Law, and--on June 4, 1989--bullets.
Wang went to Tiananmen Square to get statements from protestors and student leaders and left just ten minutes before the massacre began. She watched the rest from a 14th floor balcony of a fellow reporter at the Beijing Hotel.
As I read her account of the violence I sat horrified. I still find it hard to believe that so many soldiers were willing to kill their own countrymen simply to comply with an order from the head of government, who at this point had little control of anything in the country--except the People's Liberation Army. Apparently he thought the army could be best put to use at liberating the people from the confines of Tiananmen square where they had been peacefully protesting for nearly two months. On that day of bloodshed the Chinese government reported that they killed 241 people and wounded 7,000, although estimates from more legitimate sources report up to 7,000 deaths (NATO). It boggles my mind that when I was four years old the government of an industrialized country ordered their army, an army named for their duty to liberate the people and brainwashed to repeat the phrase 'The army loves the people, the people love the army,' to open fire on a significantly large group of peaceful demonstrators. Granted, the same type of thing happened just 13 years earlier on a much smaller scale and such action could almost be anticipated from the likes of the repressing Chinese dictatorship, it's still a wonder to me how this happened life went on all around the world. In the US groups staged protests and George Bush stopped all military sales to China. And everybody in China went back to work making our shoes, toys and office supplies. I guess a lot of change has happened since then, but I they're still a long shot from enough change. And when it comes, it might seem like it's a day late and a dollar short, but now's better than Mao and later's better than never. The Olympics looked nice the other year. The U.S. beat the Chinese is nearly everything but gymnastics. Oh, the irony to losing to China in a competition of flexibility.
That's really all I had to say. If anyone old enough to remember this could tell me their initial reaction to the massacre, that'd be cool.

Trust, Risk and Learning

2010-01-13T12:36:00.002-07:00

Granpa's trade is whiskey making and considers himself pretty good at it. Since it's the only trade he knows, he teaches this trade to Little Tree (five years old at the time). Leaving the still one day, a couple of men were set out on the path and they had to hide the still and split up so Granpa could get away with the bulk of the wares. Little Tree was confronted and chased by the men, but made it back home safely to find Granpa and Granma waiting for him. In another chapter Little Tree bought a calf from a "Christian man" for $.50, which died on the way home from town. Granpa explained that if he would have stopped him from buying it, Little Tree would have always looked back on the day feeling sore at Granpa. If he would have told him to buy it, he would have blamed the calf dying (and losing the $.50) on Granpa. "Ye'll have to learn as ye go."
The close call coming back from the still and the poor trade with a Christian really cemented Granpa and Granma's teaching methods for me. They knew that Little Tree would encounter these situations in life and did not hide from it. In fact, I believe that they expected him to find him self in a similar jam later on in life and that he would need to make a decision then as well. Although only five years old, they were not going to sheild him from the world, they were willing to let him experience it. It's hard to believe that you can give a kid money and not expect him to spend it. Or give him responsibility in an illegal whiskey operation and not expect him to run into trouble at some point. Granma and Granpa knew the risks associated with allowing Little Tree to be an active participant in their family; to be his own, really. I take them as folks who can assess risks in life. The way they let Little Tree learn was not without risks, but the most protective way of learning doesn't come without risks itself.
We have no choice as health educators but to teach according to the political safeguards made by policymakers, local education administrators and school boards. This makes it difficult sometimes to be as effective as we'd like. We must trust that there is enough education going on in the home, church or other auxillary institution that our teaching is not necessary. But really, the only subject safeguarded in sexuality education, and we have free reign over the rest of the course. We aren't the parents and cannot protect them from the real world even if we wanted to. Many high schools are more like the real world from which some of kids are being protected than the city streets are. This is why it's important to teach health effectively and efficiently in the junior high and high schools, because parents may not be enough to prevent unhealty lifestyles, and in some cases promote them.

New Year, New Reading List

2010-01-08T12:47:00.003-07:00

I think it's perfectly normal to keep a journal of what you read on your blog. I'm pretty sure people do this on other blogs and have entire book clubs where you can participate by commenting on the lead reader's post of a chapter. In fact, I'm doing this in one of my classes this semester. In my Practicum and Curriculum class we're reading the book The Education of Little Tree (Forrest Carter), and for every reading our professor makes a post and we all post comments of something we learned from the readings on it as part of a pass/fail assignment. I like this because I'm sure that I'd do the same thing on my own while reading the book. The book is written about an orphaned five year old Native American who goes to live with his grandparents out in the mountains. The book is great, and I'd recommend it to any and all. I figure I might as well share what I'm learning on my blog, too, because that's what I usually do when I'm not excited about concerts or complaining about sports, politics and the politics of sports.

So the book consists of Little Tree recounting experiences and learning moments with Granpa and Granma. You can tell right off that Granpa is the star of this book. From the second page when Little Tree says, "Granpa seldom spoke in a crowd, but when he did, folks listen," you knew that he would be saying things that you'd want to remember. So far that's been the extent of everyone's posts on our class blog, words of wisdom from Granpa, as well as his incredible ability to teach powerful lessons based on simple observations of nature and society.
In chapter two, while catching turkeys together, Granpa taught Little Tree about The Cherokee Way. I was impressed with Granpa's assessment of Little Tree learning The Way. He told Little Tree how animals in nature select their prey, and how in doing so they can support their livelihood in the future. After explaining the principle he then allows Little Tree to select the turkeys they would take home with them. As teachers we must teach and not just test, but help our students understand that their understanding of the subject will effect the way they make decisions in life (something a geometry teacher rarely has the opportunity to do). In addistion, we must also let them feel capable of making decisions based on what we have taught them. After teaching Little Tree, he expressed his good faith in Little Tree's understanding of The Way in giving him an opportunity to live The Way.
This type of teaching is especially important to us as health teachers. The quality of our teaching is not so much based on the grades our students get on tests, but on the number of sexually active or pregnant students in the school, or the percent of students who drink, smoke or use drugs, or their body image and nutrition. We must be able to not just effect a student's academic acheivement, but also their lifestyle. Granpa shows a good example of this by letting Little Tree make the choice himself.

I also would like to post entries on other books I'm reading this semester. One that I'm reading right now is called Red China Blues by Jan Wong. Expect to hear about that one until the end of the month when a report on it is due. But it doesn't end there; I had to buy over a dozen books for this semester and only a handful are pure textbooks, so I've got some good material for postings.

Flying Kangaroos, Dustland Fairytales and Kraft Dinner

2009-12-15T15:30:00.001-07:00

3 Venues. 3 Bands. 3 Shows. This is a review of the fall concerts I attended. They all were awesome, and all were very different.

The Australian Pink Floyd Show
September 3, 2009
Venue: USANA Amplitheater
Playlist
Speak to Me
Breathe
On the Run
Time
The Great Gig in the Sky
Us and Them
Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)
Welcome to the Machine
Pigs
Sheep
Keep Talking
Learning to Fly
...
Wish You Were Here
Money
Another Brick in the Wall
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring The Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
Encore:
Run Like Hell

I found out about the show through a radio station promotion selling $10 tickets. I was able to convince Courtney to go with, along with Todd, Andrew & Hilary, Steve, and Paul. The show was amazing for anyone who a)Loves Pink Floyd's music and/or b)Loves the art of engineering rock music. Pink Floyd's music is incredible to listen to, but even more amazing is watching the artist make the music. The Pink Floyd sound is very intricit and takes a lot of work to produce on the stage. Each guitarist had about three different pedals to get all the effects they needed for the concert, they even switched to a slide guitar at one point. Watching them use the voice guitar in Sheep was a treat and he saxaphone solo in Us and Them, switching from alto to a baritone saxophone in, like, a half a rest was also pretty impressive. Overall I was just blown away by the musical talent of the original Pink Floyd even more so than I already was because I got to see it materialize on a stage in front of me. Aside from the music, The Australian Pink Floyd Show also provides the same visual shows the original Pink Floyd used. Lots of lights and lasers and a large round projection screen behind the stage featuring wild and crazy animations for each song. Great show. The venue helped, too. There's nothing like an outdoor concert. I give it 5 out of 5 marching hammers.

The Killers
September 26, 2009
Venue: The E-Center
Playlist
Joyride
Human
For Reasons Unknown
Shadowplay
Bling
A Dustland Fairytale
Smile Like You Mean It
Spaceman
Losing Touch
Read My Mind
Mr. Brightside
All These Things That I've Done
Encore:
Sam's Town
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
When You Were Young

Courtney surprised me with tickets to this concert for my birthday. I really wanted to buy tickets for this show in the spring, but decided no to because I didn't feel like spending the money. I'm lucky my wife loves me so much. That was the take home message from this concert. Courtney wasn't feeling well but still came to the concert with me after she had worked a full day, justDe as she had done for the Pink Floyd Show. Such a great concert. The E-Center isn't the greatest venue, but Brandon Flowers sure puts on a show. He provided unlimited energy and vocal solos throughout the entire show. I was also impressed with the bassist Mark Stoemer; his energy and the fact that he looked like Paul McCartney. Guitarist Dave Keuning shared a resemblance to a muscular Robert Plant, but didn't carry quite as much energy. The highlight of the night was probably the outstanding Dustland Fairytale, ending with a guitar lead in to I Can't Help Falling in Love With You. I couldn't have picked out a more rocking encore set than the one they did, and I loved All These Things That I've Done. I give this show 4.5 out of 5 guitars.

Barenaked Ladies
December 14, 2009
Venue: The Depot
Playlist
Get in Line
What's So Maybe About Katie
The Old Apartment
Blame It On Me
God Rest Ye Marry Gentlemen/We Three Kings
New Song
Go Home
New Song
It's All Been Done
New Song
Pinch Me
One Week
If I Had $1,000,000
Encore:
Green Christmas
Feliz Navidad
2nd Encore:
When Doves Cry

I have to admit that I was a little nervous about this. I have been to one of their shows before, but now that Steven Page is gone I worried about how the songs he sang lead vocals for (nearly all of them) would sound. I have to say that everyone's picking up the slack quite well. And I mean everyone. Jim's sharing the load with Ed a lot, and sounds pretty good, although nothing can quite compare to Page's amazing vocal chords. I always love going to a concert that features an accordian, too. Kevin's great with the squeeze box and behind the keys, too. Anyways, the music is only half of why to go to a BNL concert. The other half is the outrageous antics of the band. Signature to any BNL concert are a number of ad libs ranging from SLC's new In-N-Out to geneology to how much Ed loves Kevin from the depths of his heart. The band is still hilarious. And feliz navidad was great with Tyler at the mic, but nothing was as great as When Doves Cry with an accordian, bass and maracas. And The Depot is a great place for a concert. This show gets 5 out of 5 Chinese Chickens.

Here's a movie of Feliz Navidad. Don't miss Tyler's scat in the middle.

Todd, Cindy, Courtney and I at the concert.

The Moral Dimensions of Teaching

2009-11-22T15:34:00.010-07:00

I feel like I write too much about education, but on the other hand, I'd rather write about education than my other areas of interest. All the world needs is one more sports blogger. I'm not about to post up pages and pages of statistics and shock jock opinions about what happened in the Toronto-New Jersey basketball game last night. Every once and a while I will see the need to roast somebody, but that time is not right now. Similarly worthless is a political blog. Aren't there enough Hannitys and Coulters and Frankens and Limbaughs to make the world vomit already? Nobody should have to read that stuff when it's already filling the airwaves TV listings. But just like sports, every once and a while I'll see something that I feel inclined to write about. Another subject I could write about is my own life. I'm sure everyone who reads my blog would love to see pictures of me at ESPN's gameday when they came to Provo, Courtney and I going camping and our cat Spock donning the Cone of Shame following her declawing and spaying. As much as I'm sure about that, I'm not that sure of that, so I don't post it. (Not here, at least. I post albums on facebook, and I don't like doing it twice unless it's something really entertaining or important).
To be honest, what I write directly correlates with what I read (although correlation does not infer causation; I read a whole lot more than I write about, and you ought to be glad, what with all the comparative politics studies and adolescent development crap I've read this semester). Two weeks ago I picked up a great book from the Jerome library book sale for $1. It is titled 'The Moral Dimensions of Teaching," and caught my interest because the teacher education program at BYU teaches the importance of the moral dimensions of teaching. A few years ago this agency was going to deny accreditation to BYU''s teacher education program because they did not teach the moral dimensions of teaching as addressed by John Goodlad (the editor of this book). In a couple of months they scrounged together a plan that incorporated Goodlad's ideas and started educating future teachers in its ways. The result is S.A.N.E., BYU's version of Goodlad's teachings. S.A.N.E. stands for Stewardship, Access to knowledge, Nurturing Pedagogy, and Enculturating democracy. I was first taught this in my teaching class earlier this semester, but it came up on the first day of my second block teaching course (adolescent development). From then I could tell that it's pretty important, which is why I bought the book.
The book is a collection of chapters written by Goodlad and some of his buddies. I finished the first one earlier this week, written by Goodlad, titled 'The Occupation of Teaching in Schools.' The focus of this chapter is to describe teacher education and to identify the disconnect between teaching in the classroom, policymaking in the boardroom, and administrating in the Principal's office. At the end, he introduces the moral dimensions of teaching as necessary to describe the mission of teaching, and thus create a uniform basis of training teachers across the country.
The problem all began when a famous historian was hired by Harvard for an exorbitant salary, and he was allowed to not teach his first year at the university. From that point on universities became houses of research first, and education second. "By the 1980s," Goodlad wrote, "professors in these schools, if involved with future teachers at all, were more likely to be studying them than preparing them to teach." The conditions were rocky in the teacher-administrator relationship at this point, too. Before my great-grandpa Vern died in 1990, my father visited him on his deathbed. Coach recalls this about their conversation: "Grandpa Vern asked how teaching was going and I said fine. He responded with, 'Be sure to keep those damned administrators out of your classroom.'" The preparation for administrators in schools focused more on management techniques and less on education. However little the principal actually knew about education, it was generally assumed from the outside that they have authority in regard to the evaluation of teachers, when in fact, they knew very little about what goes on (or is supposed to go on) in a classroom. These administrators are the ones that go on to write the policy that outlines what should happen in the classroom. Luckily this is in most cases, not the situation of today. Most schools offering a masters of educational administration require at least three years of teaching, making for more prepared administrators founded in principles of teaching and education.
Goodlad mentions the appeal of teaching as a calling. He brings up examples of future teachers he interviewed who recalled disappointed parents, teachers trying to talk them out of it, and friends who think they're crazy. Many, however, described teaching as "exceedingly important and potentially satisfying--as a calling." According to Goodlad those who take upon themselves this calling--where good judgment and exceptional skill is involved in order to be effecient--must abide by a set of normative principles he calls the moral dimensions of teaching.
Enculturation: Educators must provide their students with "critical perspectives on the nature of democratic societies." As a poli sci nut, I couldn't agree more. This is necessary for the "induction of the young into our culture."
Access to Knowledge: Every young person deserves an equal shot at being educated. As much as many Americans believe this is actually carried out by our great nation, it is not, and to them I refer Jonothan Kozol's Shame of a Nation or Savage Inequalities. "Opportunities to gain access to the most generally useful knowledge are maldistributed in most schools, with poor and minority children and youths on the short end of the distribution." How could this be the case? "Casual, misguided, decisions with regard to grouping and tracking students, apportioning the domains of knowledge and knowing in the curriculum, allocating daily and weekly instructional time, scheduling, and other practices often distribute access to knowledge unfairly and inequitably." Teachers carry the responsibility of recognizing programs that do this within the school and standing up for the fair and equitable distribution of access to knowledge.
The Teacher and the Taught: Teachers must realize that their students are in a compulsory setting and that they did not choose to be there. Anything we can do as teachers to bring the subjects we teach into the students' realm of importance will give them more motivation to succeed. Students are only motivated in the core subjects (English, mathematics, social studies and sciences) when they aspire to more schooling. Teachers must be focused on making the subject matter important for the individual.
Renewing School Settings: There is an overwhelming trend in the nation calling for reform in schools and requiring results. When positive results of one reform aren't seen immediately, another reform is enacted to "fix the problem." Goodlad says, "If schools are to become the responsive, renewing institutions that they must, the teachers in them must be purposefully engaged in the renewal process...'School renewal' becomes a nonevent, one more in the cycle of nonevents that characterize the school improvement enterprise.
More teacher involvement in the reform/renewal process requires more time. "Teachers employed for 180 days and required to teach 180 days simply will not renew their schools. It is ludicrous and self-deceiving to believe that they will. Further, such an expectation borders on the immoral. The answer...is 180 days of teaching and 20 or more additional days of institutional renewal. We can begin to look seriously at teaching as a profession when it no longer is a part-time job. Teaching will become a full-time occupation when the public sees the need for it." Nationwide reforms will not provide all the answers for every single school because the contextual factors for every school are different. It is up to the teachers to provide insight into how the school should adjust to best meet the needs of the school's unique conglomeration of students--not some suit in DC. Any teacher could tell you this is true, yet, like Goodlad said, to ask teachers to effectively do this in the amount of time their given every year is more than slightly ridiculous.
The opening chapter provided an excellent hook for me, and I hope the rest of the book is as good as this.

Watching for Credits

2009-10-18T15:08:00.005-06:00

I'm taking some fairly interesting classes this semester, including Human Biology and Theories of Comparative Politics, but the first half of this semester (now coming to a close) I've spent an exceptional amount of time for one class in particular--Exploration of Teaching. For two weeks we met in class every day and talked about what we like about the idea of teaching as a career and things we would have to do as health teachers. We read from a really good textbook written by our professor and her husband and watched Cipher in the Snow (sooooooo depressing, yet somewhat necessary for people who are going to work with children). Then everyone in the class was assigned two schools in Utah valley to go to and observe the health teachers. For the past month I've been to American Fork High School and Springville Junior High School watching a couple of teachers from different sides of the spectrum teach health and love doing it. It may seem silly to have a class where all you do is watch someone teach, but I learned more about teaching in these five weeks than I did in my Sociology of Education and Foundations of Education classes combined...okay, I don't know if that's exactly true, because I absolutely LOVED going to those two classes and doing my work for them, but I have learned more about teaching in the classroom watching someone teach than reading about the sociology of education or discussing the foundations of education.
American Fork High School is a very impressive high school. They have lots of technological resources and lots of money and a new looking school. The health teacher, Anne Johnson, has been there for 42 years. The students like her class and respect her. She showed me a file cabinet filled with folders of stuff she's used over the past 40 years to teach health, all organized in folders for every lesson of the year. And the first pages in every folder are prints of power point presentations she has made and presents for each lesson. As much as I got tired of the blonde jokes she told at the start of every class, she does a good job with those kids, and I hope that I can still love to teach just for the interaction with the students like she does when I'm her age.
Springville Junior High is an old building with an old intercom system and probably some asbestos. Teachers still had access to technology, though, and all classes are electronically connected so teachers can actually help students study what they need to during their advocacy period. Ryan Chambers played outfield and pitcher for BYU and did some time in the minors pitching in the Cubs' organization in 2005 before coming back to Utah to teach health. He's in the process of getting a masters in sports conditioning and performance online from SUU. It's his first year in junior high after three at Payson High School, and he loves how much more excited the kids are to learn at this age. He has the kids work on activities making brochures and pamphelets to internalize the information. His favorite part as well is the interaction with the students.
Both Ryan and Anne are excited to be teaching. Anne after 42 years and Ryan after spending a summer with Single-A Boise, and being lights out in rookie league. I hope that I will have no regrets when I start teaching; that I can be as excited as Ryan and Anne about what I'm doing. I wish that I could watch all of the health teachers in the Utah valley and see what I like and dislike about each of them so I can shape my teaching style even better. A year from now I'll be in the classroom, by myself, everyday, teaching health to young people; I feel too far away from being adequate to teach to be this close to needing to be ready, but I guess I don't have any say in when the time comes, only in my level of preparedness.

Why do I do this?

2009-10-06T23:50:00.003-06:00

I sometimes find comments on facebook that I feel need a little expansion/correction. This one is from today. (Names and most photos have been censored to protect the individuals' privacy)

Lisa Empey Hall (my mom) is having trouble paying medical bills because her preimum sucks to much money out of the paycheck. Somethings not quite right here.

7 hours ago · Comment · Like / Unlike

Unnamed
I'm waiting for a big bill from my hubby's two stents the past month..,one bill was 32,000.00 bucks don't know what my protion will be...thankful we met our deductable & out of pockect this year!

6 hours ago

Unnamed

Well, we soon could be going to socialized medicine, where you don't have to pay anything. Except sky high taxes. But, just remember, you get what you pay for. The taxes go to pay the administrators, and everyone else gets bubkes.

6 hours ago

Keith Hall

Actually, the only people who would be on the 'public option' (not socialized medicine, which sounds like everybody gets free prozac, viagra and percoset), called the National Health Insurance Exchange would become availible to everybody, but if you like your current plan you can keep it.
The catch is, yes, your tax dollars will be going into the NHIE even if you aren't in it. So while the new plan is supposed to foster competition, it makes private health care more expensive for everyone just by entering the market. That sucks.
The taxes do go to pay administrators, just like your premium does. Health insurance, be it from the state or from the private sector, is a lot of paperwork and administration. In the end, paying for health insurance sucks, which is why so many Americans don't have it.
Under the NHIE millions of people who cannot afford insurance will gain some sort of minimal coverage, and we're all paying for it.
The question we're all asking now is why this is a good idea. It's not a good idea for people who already have insurance, just for those who don't. The Dems wanted to do this for them. Aren't you mad at them? Don't we all believe that they're all just waiting for a handout? They don't work hard enough, do they? Maybe if they'd get off their butt and food stamps they could afford some health care. Maybe if they didn't drop out they would have gotten a job and a hc package, but no, they don't deserve it now. This is the land of opportunity---one opportunity. "You only get one shot do not miss this chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime," in the words of a great American. Those people who are denied coverage based on preexisting conditions should suck it up or make more money so they can afford coverage and treatment. ... Read More
Of 304m Americans, 40+m don't have coverage. That's
13%. Who's letting the minority have a say in this legislation? Doesn't the majority rule? Or in this case, the Haves? (pardon my Marx, I couldn't resist)
Whatever, it's gonna happen. And you know what makes me mad, we're raising taxes in a recession. What an idiot! This never would have happened if Mitt wouldn't have lost all those votes to an optimistic cutthroat anti-Mormon Mike Huckabee (what a schmuck).

6 hours ago · Delete

Keith Hall

Yes, I just did that.

6 hours ago · Delete

Lisa Empey Hall

Thanks alot Keith. This is what you education is doing to you. I am still not sorry that I complained that my health insurace sucks.

5 hours ago

Keith Hall

Rest assured that at least you aren't paying for my education

5 hours ago · Delete

Lisa Empey Hall

Well, I do pay tithing.

5 hours ago

Touche mother.

The Economy of Poor Fan Support

2009-09-21T09:57:00.002-06:00

Many students may be disappointed with the football team's performance on Saturday. Most of us, I believe, expected more of a game than we saw. But for the most part, what happens on the field is beyond our control. For the most part, all we can do is watch. For the most part, at least.

There was a day when BYU fans all across the East side of the stadium would stand and yell the entire time we were on defense. Teams had trouble in the huddle and audibling because of the noise in the stadium. Alas, Saturday after the third play of the game Florida State had a first down and many fans were so amazed by this that they felt they could no longer rise and shout, for these were not the Cougars they thought would be out. Fans continually lost momentum as FSU scored, O'Neil Chambers fumbled, and the halftime show put them to sleep. By the third quarter, there had been enough turnovers and Florida State touchdowns for many fans to consider the unthinkable and leave the game a whole quarter early. Fans were already streaming out of the stadium causing traffic problems with twenty minutes left in the game, when Max Hall completed an 80-yard touchdown to McKay Jacobson, and missed that completely. There was still hope for the mighty cougars, yet they lacked the loyal strong and true, who claimed to join in song in praise of the team, with strong faith.

Why did this happen? That's easy to answer--adjustable rate mortgages. Yep, I believe the financial crisis made many of the best fans turn away from buying tickets this year because of their high price. The selling price was also too lucrative for many poverty-stricken fans to hold on to their tickets, but instead sell them to lessor fans in order to pay for food, rent, dates, etc. A small few of us stood the entire game long, cheering for a comeback, having heard stories of how the faith of our fathers brought miracles to pass in Holiday Bowls of past days, knowing that there was still hope for a comeback.

In the future I hope those who intend to leave the game early will sell their tickets, or even give them away, to someone who will rise and shout for four quarters of football. It's better for the team, it's better for fans, it's better for BYU.

Who's Talking To Your Kids These Days

2009-09-09T10:24:00.009-06:00

Your child is going to have one professional visit their school. Both of these men spoke in public schools yesterday. In case you haven't heard of either of them, I've listed their credentials and recent newsworthy events in their lives. Who would you rather have?

Michael Vick

Graduated from Warwick High School (VA)
Attended Virginia Tech University for 2 years where he played football
Drafted by the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League
Played six years for the Falcons; voted to Pro Bowl three times
November 26, 2006- gives Atlanta fans the bird after team's fourth straight loss
July 2007- charged with a felony for running a dog fighting ring (Bad Newz Kennels)
September 14, 2007- tested positive for marijuana while on bail
November 2007-began prison sentance
July 7, 2008- declared chapter 11 bankruptcy
May 2009- released to house arrest
July 27, 2009- reinstated to NFL
August 13, 2009- signs contract with Philadelphia Eagles
September 8, 2009- speaks to students at Nueva Esperanza Academy

Barack Obama

Attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University and graduating with a degree in Political Science
Director of the church based Developing Communities Project in Chicago
Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School
President of the Harvard Law Review
Illinois state senator 1997-2004
Keynote speaker for the Democratic National Convention 2004
U.S. Senator 2004-2008
President of the United States 2008-present

I will concede that Michael Vick was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and nearly unbeatable on Madden. Also, Barack Obama used drugs and alcohol in high school, is a democrat, wants to give health care to everyone living in the United States and has mismanaged the country's economic conundrum. That being said, Michael Vick has been out of prison for four months, whereas Barack Obama has been the leader of the free world for eight months.

Was that an easy decision? The people with the easiest decision are probably those who chose Michael Vick solely on the basis that President Obama is a democrat and they disagree with his policies. Maybe they've lost a love one their job, maybe they threaten to hike taxes to an intolerable point, or maybe they're all just part of a conspiracy theory posing Barack Obama to be the next Adolf Hitler or the antichrist. Presidents aren't perfect, but they are the figurehead of this nation. Does anyone remember "My Fellow Americans?" Two former presidents (one democrat, one republican) find themselves at the bottom of a conspiracy and are on the run. At one point they find themselves hitching a ride with a family in their station wagon. As it turns out, the couple lost their jobs due to Jack Lemmon's budget cuts, and James Garner's economic downturn. You can watch it all on YouTube--I highly reccomend it.

James Madison provided for conflict to exist in the nation when he wrote the constitution. Without conflict, we see things like monarchy, facism and suffering. Conflict provides opportunities for the unhappy to formally rise against those in power and bring about change. President Obama and his supporters seemed to believe change was needed and did something about it. He's no better or worse a man than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Al Gore, although he may be a better speaker. At the end of the day, I think all three of that bunch would agree with what Obama said in his speech to the kids. I've provided a link to that, as well as a recap of Michael Vick's message as well.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4455112

Democracy, revisited

2009-06-19T08:53:00.004-06:00

Iran bled their true colors this morning. The controversial election has been legitimized by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamemei. "Eleven million votes difference? Sometimes there's a margin of 100,000, 200,000, or 1 million maximum. Then one can doubt maybe there has been some rigging or manipulation or irregularities. But there's a difference of 11 million votes. How can vote rigging happen?" I don't know Ali, have you looked at the MLB All-Star game lately (specifically 1999)? Moussavi instructed his followers to boycott the morning prayers. Apparently he didn't have much hope in the system. For the same reason I don't vote for MLB All-Stars;)
True democracy is not what Iran chose in 1979. It opted for sharia law and giving ultimate power to an unelected clerical leader. Today he spoke and the people have to listen. I wrote this back in May, "If democracy is determined by fair and balanced elections and fair process of law by those who are elected, Iran has been weighed and measured and is found lacking. If democracy is to be determined as a government doing what its people want it to, Iran is in the running." At this point Iran is right here. The people complained about the lacking nature of their electoral process, and the Supreme Leader has told them what's what. If the people are truly unhappy with the outcome, we may see the country's second revolution in thirty years (and this time the US might even lend a hand, if the Iranians play their cards right: ). But something tells me the Supreme Leader has a hold on the people, as he and all he says are connected with the people's worship. According to Shia Islam tradition a fatwa, or decree from a religious scholar, could be binding--his words are as good as sharia law.
"The 10th presidential election was actually a great show in which people indicated their responsibility towards the destiny of their country. It was a great manifestation of people's participation in the affairs of their country. It depicted very well people's solidarity with their establishment,"
And so it is.

Democracy....maybe

2009-06-13T10:18:00.005-06:00

Yesterday marked the tenth Iranian presidential election in thirty years of a Shah-less Iran. Thanks to the revolution of 1979 the Iranian people have been protected from evil tyrants destroying their country with weak domestic policy and controversial foreign relations. What?!?!?!?! Do you mean to tell me that Iran isn't safe from that? What happened? Didn't Ayatollah Khomeini solve all social ills and institute the first democratic Muslim state? After thirty years of democracy, their 'democratically elected president' acts similarly to the shah? Why yes; with a wildly high voter turnout of 80%, 65% of the people voted for incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yes, 80% of all eligible Iranian voters showed up in a very important, very heated presidential election. Ahmadinejad's 65% of those constitute over 50% of eligible voters, which is quite amazing. His opponent received just 33% of the vote, and--like many other observers--cries "foul play". I'm usually not one to get too involved on foreign matters because every culture is different and some people don't give a rat for what America says about their politics, but I'm going to have to call foul as well.
1)Unrealistic margin of victory
This was a much closer election leading up to the election than it seemed to be on election day. Mir Hossein Moussavi did extremely well in debates and campaigning and caught fire in the last week of the election. I don't see Ahmdinejad legitimately doubling his opponent's vote count.
2)Why would anyone vote for this loser?
Ahmadinejad has ran the country into economic turmoil and made the country subject to even more foreign criticism than ever before. If a president did such things in America, we would surely vote him out of office, or vote his party out of office (see Election 2008).
The media has become increasingly skeptical of the results, which has led to greater media filtering in Iran: the censoring of a reformist paper, the jamming of BBC broadcast, and the mysterious malfunction of Facebook and Twitter. Moussavi's supporters continue to riot in the streets despite violent opposition in the form of clubs and chains in the hands of Iran's riot police. In all reality, this election has highlighted Iran as a government protectionist state than a thriving democracy.
The Supreme Leader has caved today and called for an investigation into possible election fraud, but with any luck, Ahmadinejad's cronies already head that department, too. Congratulations on drawing even more foreign criticism and spurring the most domestic controversy in your country since the revolution in 1979.

The Times They Are A Changin'

2009-05-23T21:33:00.007-06:00

Bob Dylan was right. Things aren't the same anymore. I'm in Linden, California, packing cherries once again. Last year I said I wasn't coming back here. I told everybody that I was getting married, going to school for a year straight, and graduating August 2009. Plans have changed. I'm married, I'm not going to school, I'm not graduating until 2011. And I'm back here with my good friends at Prima Frutta Packing. The joke around here is that you can't stay away from this place, and apparently I fit the part. I'm coming back, though to a different job. This year I brought my old roomate Andrew for a job, and we're woking together on dialing in the consumer pack machines. After two years in the pit, I miss it. I miss the rush, the interaction with the workers, the interaction with cherries. The work we're doing is all just machine testing, optimizing the system. It's not bad, it's just a change.

I'm away from Courtney for an extended period of time the first time in our marriage. At least I know she's with friends, as she knows of me as well. In eighteen days Andrew and I will return to Provo to our wives late at night and go to bed and sleep for a day straight. I can't wait for that day, and we've only worked 52 hours this week--half of what we'll do next week. We haven't even started out here. I miss Courtney more than I miss all those things about a job working the pit. For a number of reasons, I won't be back next year. Now I know what you're thinking, it's early, and yes, I've said that at least once before, probably twice, but I really can't go. I'd rather not go this long again separated from Courtney, and if I'm really plan on graduating in 2011, which is late enough as it is, I have to go to school next summer.

We ran out of early last night so I went over to see the Rendulic family. My friend Dora with whom I graduated high school back in 2003 is in her second year of med school. In two years she'll be a doctor and I'll be a teacher. More change. My friend Chris King is graduating this Saturday. The joke there is that if we would have placed a 50 cent bet in 2003 that Chris King (pictured here third from the left with his roomies at Chico State) would graduate from college before me, Atlee, and Matt people would have told us to buy a Whatyamacallit instead, but alas, we would actually be millionaires today. I gained a new career track, Atlee gained a religion, and, heck, I think Matt might finish next year. Change isn't always bad, it's good. I'll be much happier working in education than in the West Wing. Atlee's plenty happy on his mission and Chris and Matt are happier now than they would have been had they pursued the path they were on after one year at Delta College. I'm happy with where we're all at today. I'm happily married, happily pursuing a career I feel passionate about, and happily writing blogs about Star Trek, concerts, things in the news, and things I learn about in my classes. Even if it's not what I imagined I'd be doing five years ago. There's a battle outside and it is ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are a-changin'.

Kahn: The Real Nemesis

2009-05-09T10:25:00.008-06:00

(I've found a great site with Star Trek motivational posters like this at http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/star_trek_insp.html. Check it out for a lot of good stuff)

In preparation for the new Star Trek movie Courtney and I have watched all ten previous Star Trek movies. Thursday night we finished it off with Nemesis, which I had never before seen. Turned out to be a great show, of course, because Patrick Stewart is awesome. As I thought about the movie more that night, I came to a realization of why it was such a great movie--it was fashioned after the manner of the greatest of all Star Treks, even Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Here's why:

1) The villain who want nothing more than to kill the Captain.

Okay, so this is a stretch, because Praetor Shinzon wanted to destroy the entire human race, but it's no stretch to say that he couldn't live without killing Picard. In fact, that's the entire reason he tried to kill him. Both Kahn and Shinzon had beef with the captain of the Enterprise. One wanted revenge, the other wanted life.

2) Both involved the prevention of the usage of a weapon of global destruction.

Kahn stumbles upon the Genesis project which, while meant to create life, has the capacity to destroy entire planets, giving life across the globe to a new ecosystem, in which the former inhabitants are not to be found. Shinzon and the Remans tamed thalaron radiation, which instantly destroys all living tissue and can be used in controlled amounts and areas, and planned to destroy all life on earth with it. Kahn got away with detonating Genesis, but a heroic android prevents the use of the thalaron radiation. Which brings me to my next point...

3) Both required the sacrifice of the crew's inhuman pespective.

Spock, the logical half-Vulcan, sacrificed his life to manually repair the warp drive and dies speaking his last words to Kirk through the glass wall, soaking with radiation. Data the android jumped through space from the Enterprise to Shinzon's ship in order to beam the Captain back aboard the Enterprise and destroy the thalaron weapon before detonation. Both events leave you very discomforted at the end of the movie, but Spock is resurrected in Star Trek III: Search for Spock, and by mind melding with Bones before entering the radiation chamber, Spock leaves his mind in McCoy's to preserve it, and earlier in the movie Data transferred his memory banks to his older, incompetent brother B-4, who is in the Captain's care at the end of the movie. Sadly, though, with the newest Star Trek movie being a prequel involving the old guard, I don't see any resolution involving Data like that for Spock.

4) Both movies involve man's desires to harness the powers of God.

The Genesis project gave man the power of God to create worlds without number in one swift touch of a button. Shinzon, a clone of Captain Picard, represents the final day of creation, when God creates man in his own image. The latter of these was not done with good intentions. The cloning of Picard was done in a plot of Romulan trickery to take over the Federation. Picard points out, however, that although his life had made him a miserable, evil antagonist, Shinzon still had the capacity for good. It didn't take long for McCoy, upon learning the truth about the Genesis project, to criticize the destructive nature of the Genesis project. Kirk points out that in the wrong hands it could be used as a weapon, and Bones asks whose hands were wrong.

That's why the powers of God are God's. That's why the priesthood of God requires worthiness and faith of God. The powers of God are much too fragile for us to take lightly. The ill-advised use of his powers and trust carry with it the heaviest of consequences that can really hurt people. From the confidential obligations of a bishop to the financial matters of a clerk; from the way we take care of our bodies to the reactions of a missionary representative in confrontational situations; from the choosing a topic for a general conference talk, to choosing whether to honor powers of procreation meant to only be used in marital relationships. Imperfect, mortal men are not meant to create planets and life and dictate their actions for their own purposes. The powers of God are to be used to complete God's purposes by those he has chosen to empower. Not Sybok, in case you wondered.

That's my synopsis. It had some great action scenes. Picard's battering ram attack was very Kirk-esque, and was probably his best performance in military strategy in his whole Starfleet career.

It all came down to this...

2009-04-21T18:14:00.013-06:00

This semester I took Middle East Political Systems. My professor Amr Al-Azm is Lebanan-raised of a Syrian father and Palestinian mother. Needless to say, he has some serious bias going on. But I was open-minded through the course and learned so much, even if it did come from his anthropological, anti-Israel, anti-Bush administration point of view. We had weekly assignments that weren't that interesting, so I didn't post them. I now feel competent enough to write commentaries about happenings in the Middle East and will do so in the future. (Iran's having an election this summer, expect something). As for now, I'll post my final.

Now, I spent two and a half hours building my argument as I went without proofreading anything, but I'm putting it up anyways. He must have liked it, I got full credit for it, but I wasn't trying to write what he wanted to hear. In fact, we didn't even talk about Saudi Arabia or Turkey in the class, I just did the assigned readings. I am actually very passionate about this subject. In Star Trek they call it the Prime Directive: "No Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture." The Prime Directive is General Order #1 and the guiding principle of Starfleet. Maybe we could learn something from Star Trek.

The consistent instability of non-democratic, Islamist Middle East nations gives the appearance that perhaps Islam is incompatible with democracy. Because of this, many believe Islam to be the main deterrent to progress and stability in the Arab world. I believe, however, there is evidence to support the opposite. In this paper I give three examples of stable leaders of the Middle East—Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey—as examples of stability in the region, proposing an alternant view of democracy, progress and Islam.
The first model of a stable Middle Eastern country I have chosen is Iran. Iran has been a major player on the world stage since the Islamic revolution of 1979. By dethroning the Shah, however, Iran took the role of antagonist against the country that would become the post-Cold War hegemon, the United States. Recently American anxiety toward Iran resurfaced in the Bush administration’s inclusion of Iran in the modern Axis of Evil. Iran’s persistent drive toward nuclear proliferation is evidence of its desire not to crush all enemies of Islam, but rather to gain the respect it deserves as a major world power and to deter the thoughts of other country’s who may think otherwise and try to undermine the state. Iran holds a wealth of oil beneath its crust, and influence in a number of other Middle East nations, including Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.
There is no question of Iran’s stability, or of its deep Islamic influence, as the country follows sharia law, and entrusts its executive powers to the faqih, or supreme leader, a Shiite cleric with expertise in Islamic law. Because so much power is given to the supreme leader, foreign nations give little legitimacy to the elected Iranian president and parliament. There is an overwhelming opinion in the modern world that there must be some sort democratic input involving elections and policy, and a supreme leader frustrates this image. On the other hand, the people of Iran voiced an opinion in 1979 that has given them the type of government that they have today. Sharia law as interpreted by a Shiite cleric clearly is not too problematic with a population that is 89% Shiite Muslim.
If democracy is determined by fair and balanced elections and fair process of law by those who are elected, Iran has been weighed and measured and is found lacking. If democracy is to be determined as a government doing what its people want it to, Iran is in the running. For example, current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his anti-U.S. rhetoric have filled media airwaves painting an awful picture, not of Ahmadinejad the president, but of Iran the country, in the minds of foreigners. Iranian discomfort with this misrepresentation will be seen in this summer’s elections, as Ahmadinejad will likely lose the election to a more conservative candidate.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia presents us with another example of a legitimate Middle East power. Unlike Iran, however, Saudi Arabia provides no cover for its undemocratic government. The Saud dynasty traces its roots back to the eighteenth century, and continues today in the hands of Kind Abdallah, who reigns in absolute monarchical power over his kingdom. The absence of democratic government institutions in Saudi Arabia, however, has not hindered its progress.
It is currently in the top quarter of the world in per capita GDP and holds a literacy rate that is probably higher than the United States’ real rate. But is their progress slighted by a high security, low freedom government? Saudi Arabia’s most powerful ally, the United States, has not indicated to their friend King Saud that authoritarian dictators like him who restrict the freedom of his people have no right to exist in this world, nor that we will include his kingdom in our next ‘Axis of Evil’ list and invade Saudi Arabia to free the Islamic people of their repression. Surely Saudi Arabia’s assistance in the Global War on Terror is a factor here, but in any other case the United States usually isn’t slow to call out monarchies that limit human rights and bar basic freedoms. It would seem that a country lacking in democracy is perfectly able to gain international acceptance and progress economically when counterterrorism efforts and crude oil are found.
In conclusion I present Turkey, a fully-democratic, stable nation in the Middle East. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey failed to establish a stable system of government until the 1980s, but since has seen a sound economy and stable government processes. It currently eyes membership in the European Union, trying to break the wealthy white European mould filled by other members. Clearly, acceptance into the European Union would solidify claims of being a stable regional power.
The ‘anomaly’ people find in Turkey is that the stable and democratic government exists in a country where 98% of the population practice Islam. Turkey is proof that Muslims can exist together in a society where the government is neither authoritarian nor determined by sharia law. Many accept Turkey’s success as proof that democracy is the only way in which a predominantly Muslim country can obtain stability, and would propose such secular forms of government (like the ones in which the accusers likely live) to other Middle East countries whose country’s future seems to be in flux. The examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia, however, cause reason to believe that perhaps different strokes really do work for different folks. There is not one form of government that is ultimately better than all others, an assumption made by those who claim that progress and stability cannot be attained without democracy. Progress and stability have taken place in the predominantly Muslim countries Iran and Saudi Arabia without the presence of a fully functional democracy, and such progress is possible for other nations in the region as well.

Good Idea, Bad Idea

2009-03-27T09:57:00.008-06:00

What is the purpose of education in America? What are we trying to do? I tried to find a clear cut goal for our educating young minds on the U.S. Department of Education web page and had some difficulty. From what I gathered, we promote educational excellence for all Americans. Finally I found the strategic plan for 2007 through 2012 which declares as their mission statement, “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” That’s a big mission. To accomplish this monumental task, they developed three goals:
==>Improve student achievement, with a focus on bringing all students to grade level in reading and mathematics by 2014.
==>Increase the academic achievement of all high school students.
==>Ensure the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of higher education, and better prepare students and adults for employment and future learning.

The goals are followed by four or five objective, and each objective is followed with four or five strategies, following the strategic planning matrix used in the field of public relations. These are some good goals, good objectives, and they include many well-planned strategies, too. I’m not sure enough people know that this is the plan the country has for educating our children. Maybe they should work out a marketing strategy, too. The main character in our reading this week covered it all. The mission statement: “His whole education and training must be ordered as to give him the conviction that he is absolutely superior to others.” This man did not solely desire a competent, well-trained and educated country, he wanted the best, and he wanted his people to realize that they were the best. In this sense, he supports a magnanimous people, a people who have gained all the best virtues, and by so doing have gained Aristotle’s ‘crowning virtue’--magnanimity. Now, what are some of the goals he had to complete his mission?

1)“The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated.” Here we see the adherence to the all important advice to clean the inner vessel first. If the children we educate are greater than those of any country, we must purge our system of any outside influence perverting the minds of our children. There is no doubt the United States is working on this right now, but to the erroneous extent of depriving its children knowledge of the outside world from which the United States is isolated and to which is superior (specifically Europe and anywhere else outside the country where newsworthy events occur).

2) “Obedience is praised as a virtue.” Is there anything as true as this? The number one rule to life is really blind obedience to the talking heads that, in return, will grant you all that you could ever ask for. Degrees, certification, licensure, promotion, money, glory, laud and honor. All this can be anybody’s--it’s an equal opportunity system, only different than the U.S., because instead of just being a mandatory path, it’s the only path, and the what’s available at the end of the rainbow is actually good enough to motivate students to perform.

3) “This folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inculcation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolute healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary.” Absolute healthy bodies? This isn’t a plan to produce a bunch of obese computer techs and realtors, it’s a plan to edify the entire body, mind and spirit. The healthier a people, the more work they can accomplish, the less need for state health care, the greater ability to produce, and most importantly, the greater GDP. The United States may want to jump on the bandwagon with this mentality before as a people we’re too overweight to hop.

4) “It (the state) must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people.” He further claims that only the healthy (body, mind, and soul, remember), those troubled by sickness and deficiencies should bring children into the world, and that the highest honor is to renounce bringing impure children into this world. Each child is the absolute most important thing brought into the country each day. Babies have the greatest potential to learn and grow of all of the living things on earth. Every newcomer to earth deserves to have the best given to them; they deserve tender love and care to become truly magnanimous, not handicapping circumstances that prevents the state from reaching its great potential. Children shouldn’t be disadvantaged before they take their first breath by coming to parents and a state education system that is ill-prepared to serve the needs of the child’s body, mind and spirit. What if we treated every child this way. What if the living circumstance into which they were born didn’t define them? What if we could actually put faith into our educational system to produce model human beings? It’s a long shot, but I’m not sure we’re exactly on that path right now, and we might want to think about it.

These types of ideas certainly have potential for the greater good of society and an amazing education system that’s sure to produce similar results to those we want to see here in the states. The creator of such a plan?

No other than Adolf Hitler, who will always be remembered as ‘the incarnation of absolute evil.’ The man Elie Wiesel of Boston University said ‘thought to reign by selling the soul of his people to the thousand demons of hate and of death.’ His plans were to create a clearly superior people through the elimination of anyone and everything different, through the objectives I mentioned. It was a great plan for the education of his drone population, but they went on to carry out the evils of his cold, black heart. His system inspired masses of people to commit heinous crimes of humanity against another people solely on the basis of their differences.

Good Idea: Educate our children to be the best in the world

Bad Idea: Educate our children to believe others in the world are weaker because they are different

Good Idea: Eliminate feelings of incompetence instill feelings of self-worth and confidence

Bad Idea: Eliminate an entire race because they are different

A system that produces mindless, heartless drones of evil should not be the recipient of any praise whatsoever…but someone’s got to consider the amazing effectiveness of their training. An education can be great, but it must be accompanied by the right reasons. A Jewish survivor said, “"My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and killed by high school and college graduates. So I’m suspicious of education.” If we use our wisdom for evil purposes, if we become magnanimous only to trample underfoot others who we deem as lesser individuals and peoples just for being different, something has gone horribly wrong. “Reading and writing,” continued the survivor, “and spelling and history and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our students human.”

The Great Inquisitor

2009-03-22T22:00:00.010-06:00

Perhaps some of you have taken the time to read "The Brothers Karamozov." I have not, however this past week I did read the great tale of Book Five known as "The Grand Inquisitor." The book, as many of you may know, is about two brothers--one preparing to be a monk, the other agnostic. In this chapter the agnostic brother, Ivan, tells a story in attempt to paint an ugly picture of the Catholic church. The story poses the question "What if Christ came to earth to during the times of the Spanish Inquisition?" From reading this along with my other knowledge of the inquisition, fostered by Monty Python, among other things, freedom in the Catholic church during the inquisition is actually quite comparable to some of the problems children encounter in the classroom.

The passage that brought this thought to me came from the Inquisitor’s statement about Jesus’ living bread. “They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them.” And while the Inquisitor might be talking about the difficulty of mortal men administering an eternal gospel to their people, we can understand it in an educational context as well. We can allow students to have many freedoms and school, but giving them those freedoms will not allow us to educate all the children. Obviously some students will make choices that will hinder their ability to learn and progress in their studies. The Inquisitor’s answer was to deny freedom, for the benefit of the whole, whereas Christ’s plan (as we who understand the Plan of Salvation understand) gives us freedom to choose, and experience the consequences of sin and error. “Nothing is more seductive for man,” argued the Inquisitor, “than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”
And yet we still send our children to these schools of compulsory learning, where we as well were sent, and where we chose to attend after high school. The Inquisitor tells his prisoner that “man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” It is because we often make bad decisions, and when we’re sick of feeling those bad decisions we decide that it will feel better if others made those decisions for us. The gospel isn’t as easy as this, for even though we are depicted by anti-Mormon media as conforming self-righteous drones, the truth is that making these decisions is incredibly hard. I haven’t met one member of the church who thinks it’s easy making righteous choices every second of every day, nor one member whose heart doesn’t fill with guilt the moment they do sin.
And that’s why compulsory school works so well for people. We would hate for our children to make poor educational decisions, and we would hate to be made responsible for their poor achievement, so we found a way that everyone is given the same path, and is forced to follow it until they crave it--until “it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony the endure at present in making a free decision for themselves,” as the Inquisitor said. Even if we really aren’t sure why we’re doing what we are, why the hoops have been held in certain places, or how we get good grades without learning or putting forth effort (which no one ever really second guesses, but should), we continue to go show up, go through the hoops, fail to learn and put forth minimal effort. “And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a mystery,” said the Inquisitor, “and to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their own conscience.”
I’m not really sure who the Inquisitor represents in these present days. I want to say Rod Paige, but I won’t. Our system needs a fix, but to give freedom is too much, I believe. Even if it’s against the principles of the gospel, even if spiritual answers are the answers to all--even temporal--problems, even if I don’t like the idea and can criticize it to death, what have we that’s any better? And how do you implement change in an institution so set in its ways? (Like introducing universal health care to the United States--not even worth the work.) Freedom is a good concept, but not as practical as we might wish it were.

On "Wealth and Poverty"

2009-03-04T11:02:00.006-07:00

"Wealth and Poverty" was written by a BYU professor in, like, 1994 (revised several times since) and is the heated topic of many classroom discussions these days. I couldn't find a link to anything on line, but I have it saved as a Word document and will send it to anyone if you'd like to see it.

My wife Courtney told me about this paper last semester when she read it for a business class. The class discussion got very heated as people began to defend their feelings about the poor. Johnson claims that he often finds “anti-poor attitudes” among students, and that they see the poor as lazy, stupid, satisfied with being poor, and that they deserve to be poor. These are exactly the attitudes that Courtney told me were being defended by her fellow classmates. And what’s worse, these people hide themselves behind the curtain of what they regard as religious principles.

One of their biggest issues is with government support of the poor. I will admit to being on that side while I was younger, but I was hit with a giant liberal bullet my Freshman year out here at the Y and became more tolerant of some things. Since members of the church are most often social conservatives, they throw their votes to the Republican Party, as well as other right-wing organizations, and subscribe to all their platform has to offer, including economic issues. Many of the statistics Johnson quotes in his paper (written in 1994) describe the change in economic climate from the late 1970s to the early 1990s--a twelve year period in which Reaganomics highlighted the American economic system. During that time the poverty programs set in place were what Johnson called “wealth-fare” because of the subsidies and tax credits the big businesses received through Reagan’s trickle-down plan. Without needing to poll a group, or run a survey, I could probably tell you today that Ronald Reagan with his conservative, capitalist Cold War agenda is the most popular president in LDS culture, most likely known as the thirteenth apostle in many a Mormon home.

Reaganomics “solved” the economy with capitalism, and President Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall, proving capitalism to be superior to the socialist way of the U.S.S.R.. The combination of these ideas in LDS culture have culminated in animosity towards the idea of the government helping the poor. A lot of it has to do with “where my hard earned money is going, and why isn’t it my wallet,” but I think that’s exactly what Johnson’s telling us the problem is. We should want to help the poor. The idea of small government has taught us that the government should be taxing us less, allowing us to make wise decisions with our money and do as we wish. Johnson has observed that this belief in free capitalism comes from a core religious belief in free agency. Thus earning more money is what God would want us to do. In doing so, we pay tithing and are able to make more generous contributions to other church funds, as well as other charities as we wish. Such charitable institutions eliminate the need for socialist governments consisting of the liberal devils of universal health care and employment safety nets, right? No.

(The following remarks do represent my feelings concerning policy adoption of the United States, only my approval of similar institutions in other countries and cultures)

What churches and charities do is not sufficient to care for the needs of those who need it. Government programs that give aid to the impoverished are not against the gospel, but part of God’s plan as we are to care for each other. Any society that believes in looking out for their fellow countrymen and creates government institutions which can do so deserves the respect of all practicing Christians. These programs are very expensive and create a heavy tax burden on the citizens, which is not a very appealing thought to Americans who live in a country where lower taxes lead the rhetoric of politicians smoozing their way into office. Countries that agree on such bold ideas receive my admiration, as our government finds it hard to agree on anything. Johnson declares the great unrecognized sin of our LDS subculture is that we do nothing or selfishly cling to one’s wealth while others suffer, and do so seeking protection under the flag of capitalism.

When is the government helping too much? Johnson cites economists who say that suffering and deprivation is a useful motivator for people to try harder. Many people say that such systems would not provide sufficient motivation for people to work. In the Christian picture of things, are we to judge what people do with our charitable gifts? Some argue that they don’t want to be an enabler to addiction or continued demotivation to work ethic. Whether it be a man with a sign at a street corner, or a single mother at the welfare office, the argument remains the same. I don’t think that people realize that welfare checks are written out to families on the basis of the needs of the children. How can we refuse to give aid to poor children despite what we might believe of their parents (considering the stigmas among Johnson’s students that poor people are poor because they’re lazy, or they’ve earned their position in life and deserve poverty)? I don’t see how we can judge others for their financial situation, seeing that most people’s wealth and socioeconomic status derives from having the right parents, the right genes or being at the right place at the right time. Don’t we believe as Christians, that people deserve more chances? Isn’t the Lord standing with his hand “stretched out still?” (Isaiah 5:25) If people mess up have they truly earned their situation, or do we as Christians believe that they deserve another shot at life? I think we know the answer. Further, I believe that we cannot judge others for not taking the same path we have chosen to follow when secondary education is as viable an option to poor children as earning a million dollars is to the middle class.

Wealth seems to be more situational than earned most times. We may not see ourselves as wealthy from our own situation, but what is ‘wealthy’ anyways? Johnson suggests that today’s ‘modest’ living could easily be defined as a ‘high’ level of comfort and convenience, whereas in times past such circumstances were only available to the upper class. Most people will put themselves into the category of ‘middle class,’ however I think the upper class not a static level, just the next one someone wants to reach. Johnson believes that wealth, materialism and self-indulgent consumption stand at odds with contemplation of Christian morality. Isn’t this what we do when we try to accumulate more and more wealth? The question is really is it morally acceptable to let the rich get richer while the poor get poorer (something that is really happening, not just said in rhetoric, mind you)? Thomas Jefferson is quoted in the paper to have said that if people forgot themselves “in the sole faculty of making money,” the future of the republic would become bleak. I think the Lord would make a similar bleak prediction for one’s spiritual standing. In the story of the widow’s mite we learn that the Lord’s judgment over the use of money is based not on how much we give away, but on how much we keep for ourselves.

Who Gets the Credit, and Why Do We Care?

2009-02-28T09:57:00.010-07:00

That’s the big question that all of Goethe’s writings led me to ask. I’ll start with some words from the ungrateful Prometheus as he cried to the heavens. “Was I not forged into a man, by all-powerful time/And eternal fate, my masters and yours?” He argues the same to Zeus that many atheists of our day argue to believers. God didn’t make me who I am today, he didn’t help me at all. I got here because of me. I am a product of my experience over time. The fate of the year molded this great edifice of a mortal. Things teachers teach will be forgotten. At one point or another we will believe we have taught ourselves things that were shown to us in classrooms by underpaid teachers in underfinanced schools. No one wants to remember those days, and so the teachers and the skills they taught become part of their own developing mind that evolved into its end product with no help from any outside source.
Goethe’s Faust also leads us into some interesting questions concerning the value of teaching. Here’s a man who is widely acclaimed as a learned professor, and yet he turns to the devil for some help. He’s done so much, but doesn’t seem like he’s done too much. Possibly because he hasn’t gone anywhere. My family lived in Linden, California for sixteen years. My father taught in the same portable classroom at Waterloo Middle School from 1991 to 2005, when he went to the high school. Having seen the before and after, the classroom looked exactly the same. The same posters of Michael Jordon, Mike Gallego and Mike Bordick and Dennis Eckersley that he posted when he got there were on the walls when he left. Some teachers don’t see more than one city, school, or classroom their entire careers. Yet young people come in and go out their doors every year, and all teachers can hope for is that they made a difference. On occasion they see an end product, but often they don’t. Without ever knowing what you’ve done to help, depression can verily easily creep up on you. The devil can drop in, and as Faust said, “The worst company will let you find that you’re a man among mankind.” In other words, the Faust had a pity party with the devil, and the phrase “I’m just a teacher and I don’t make a difference” throbbed in Faust’s head enough for him to throw in the towel.
When teachers feel like stepping down from their pulpit in self-pity and depression students don’t remember an effective, motivating, invigorating teacher who helped them become a better person, they remember a talking head who held up hoops through which students jumped and found loopholes to get around. Some of these students are not ruined by a sub-par education, however. They become professionals in law, business, health and the bureaucracy, and live very successful lifestyles. When they get there, they don’t remember an accomplished, wise teacher, they remember someone who’s still in the same portable classroom that they taught in fifteen years ago. To me, this is the saddest thing, and one that has affected me in my own life. People around me are going into careers in law, engineering, landscaping, business and forest rangering, and I’m going to be a teacher. I have always had a desire to teach, even though I danced around it forever before finally settling down right where I always wanted to be. These friends of mine will have grander “success”, perhaps, in the world, and live in nicer houses and drive more expensive cars and go on extravagant vacations, and I’ll love being a teacher, living somewhere around the poverty line and babysitting the teenagers of the entitlement generation and dealing with their whacked parents in a crackpot education system. That could get depressing at some point, so why do I want to do it?
People in other professions look for jobs where coworkers are competent and hardworking, the working environment is comfortable, and the company is profitable and well organized. Teaching won’t always be like that, and that’s something you realize when you decide that teaching is what you want to do. For a while I would tell people that I planned on going to grad school and studying education policy, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want those jobs. I love statistical research and analysis, but I don’t really want to be that distanced from the front lines. I want to teach and at some point go into administration, really find ways that work and put them to use. I guess the paycheck never worked as my motivation, but a worthwhile challenge that I believe in is worth working on--even if the payout isn’t that great.
In conclusion I refer back to the words of Prometheus. “Here I sit, shaping man, after my image…To rejoice and be glad, and like myself/To have no regard for you!” Goethe hit it right on the spot. Faust and Prometheus worked for the wrong reasons. Maybe Faust should have gone into a more lucrative profession if he was going to dismiss God as the fount of all knowledge and give himself all the credit. If we don’t give credit where it’s due, we’ll be very surprised that day when we think we deserve it and we don’t get any either.

Question Time!

2009-02-17T18:12:00.009-07:00

AFTER watching question time for the prime minister in the British parliament American politicians are no longer impressive to me. Here in America we base the entirety of our political discourse on rhetoric. This has led to a government that appears to speak, but not say anything. Last year we saw a series of debates in January, and again in September and October that highlighted our firm grasp to rhetoric. If it ever seemed like neither candidate was very good at answering the question posed, it’s because American politicians weren’t made for debate. American politicians are built upon a framework of saying what they want you to hear and hoping that you think it sounds persuasive enough for you to support them. This allows them to dance around questions at debates and close their statements on an entirely different subject than that which was questioned. To most Americans, this makes debates horribly painful to watch, and leads to votes founded in a candidate’s charisma and charm.
IN Britain, the scene is much different. Every week the head of the government, the Prime Minister, enters the House of Commons to undergo Question Time. The Speaker of the House calls on anyone who wishes to pose a question to the Prime Minister to put him on the hot seat for a minute or two. My favorite are the questions asked by the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. I watched the Prime Minister’s questions from January 21, 2009 and saw one of the weekly heated exchanges between the Right Honorable David Cameron, leader of the opposition, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At this time the British government stood in the middle of addressing their financial crisis. Cameron grilled Prime Minister Brown on the different measures that the government has taken to repair their crumbling economy and demanded answers, and with every question posed came hollers from the benches rooting him on and booing the Prime Minister. Here's the link to this and other sessions of question time.
THIS type of atmosphere requires the head of government to stand accountable for what he does. The same questioning period exists for members of the cabinet, and they stand accountable for the performance of their department. With the incessant nagging of the opposition staring at the ministers, many will resign when their departments have shown a sub-par performance, despite whether it’s their fault or not. The public gets to know what the Prime Minister is doing and his or her reasons on a weekly basis, something the American people may not get at all during a president’s term.
THIS day followed the inauguration of President Obama here in the states, and I just imagined how our previous president would have handled a weekly inquisition: a fiery Nancy Pelosi at one side of the table making a hiss and a byword out of the highly unpopular Bush administration. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against her, or anyone else, for that matter. Bush had a great speechwriter who prayed every night that the Commander in Chief wouldn’t try to say anything off the cuff.
I’M most impressed at all the knowledge that the Prime Minister must be able to hold in order to answer intelligently. He must be extremely well briefed in all his administration’s operations in order to provide real answers to questioners who will allow him to do nothing less. Simple monologues filled with generalized statements of rhetoric don’t hold water in Question Time, but from them we drink the finest tasting bull in the United States. Personally, I would like to see a government in the United States held more accountable for their actions like that in the United Kingdom, but I‘m not sure how many politicians would agree with me on that.

Thoughts on Emile

2009-02-04T17:47:00.006-07:00

I read part of Jean Jacques Rousseau's 'Emile' this week. If you haven't heard of it, the peice is his statement on education, which, you might imagine, involve quite a bit of freedom on the part of the child. Today teachers are required to teach in certain ways that comply with state mandates and learning objectives. Methods are approved by the What Works Clearinghouse as “proven educational methods” that comply with No Child Left Behind’s standards. Teachers in failing schools get very little leeway in how they can teach and use classroom time. The ideas Rousseau shares with us throughout Emile would certainly not be tolerated by Rod Paige and the four pillars of NCLB. Here are some quotes and my thoughts.

“The child is the real master of his education.” How true this could be, but isn’t. A child is naturally curious and inquisitive, and learns so much in his or her first few years in the home. While at school, however, talking heads are put in place who recite information and require recitations. Feeding ‘knowledge’ and demanding regurgitation, all in hopes of producing lasting images in the child’s mind through repetition.

“If your head guides his hands, his own mind will be useless.” To Rousseau teaching is more than just instructing. It’s more than demonstrating an equation on the board and taking a quiz. The child must be the master of his own education. If each individual is indeed an individual, then the ways of learning and understanding will be different for each person. Mimicry is a cheap trick, and imitation stunts individualism. Children must learn how to do things themselves.

“Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself.” The reason we have teachers is to guide, direct, and instruct. Teachers can enhance a child’s ability to critically think without causing the child to forsake reason. The teacher, therefore, must prompt inquisition, and ask questions that will make the child engage his mind to action

“To substitute books for (feet, hands and eyes) does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.” This, I find, is generally true. It surprised me. At first thought, this sounded blasphemous. I read over two hundred pages of textbooks every week for courses I’m taking this semester, and it helps me understand the lectures more, but what helps me really learn about the subjects? Writing assignments that require my mind to expand on topics and analyze issues. If I did not research what I read about I would not really be learning; I would be filling dark spaces of the mind with a few things that I read and underline. Now, for those of you who may be fuming like Bradbury over there, Rousseau did suggest that he would have Emile read one book. Which? Robinson Crusoe. A book such as this would expand a child's mind, and I argue that there are many today which do this, that Rousseau would simply delight in sharing with Emile. The works teaching philosophy and the sciences, I believe are his main worries.

“The child who reads ceases to think.” Reading cannot be the crutch of our learning experience. All things read in books must have a supplementary activity to lead to learning. In my quantitative political methodology course last semester, each of our weekly assignments included a case study problem that we were not told how to solve. We read about the tools, Professor Goodliffe showed us examples of how the tools work, then we were supposed to critically think through the problem at hand. It took a long time to work through these problems, but the activity helped me develop critical analytical skills. Sure, he could have taught those in class, and shown us the exact procedure, but doing it myself provided a lasting experience. Of course, I many times failed, and did not go back to correct what I did because the next assignment consumed me as soon as I would complete the previous, so I did not learn successful practices as much as I would have liked, but that’s another story. This story is about the coming to pass of this idea of Rousseau: “The child must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher, if he is not to be as idle as a savage.”

“A child can read the master’s thoughts before the master reads the child’s feelings.” I conclude on this quote, which refers back to the beginning of my thoughts. Teachers go in there with an agenda to teach a skill--whether it be writing, mathematical or scientific--and present the information in such a way that the child can easily follow the teacher’s logic. The teachers try to shield the difficulty as much as possible, and the children catch on and learn and logically connect the dots to where the teacher is going and what the teacher wants. On the other hand, children are a little more difficult to follow. My wife and I teach a class of five year olds at church, and you never know what’s going to happen. We could be singing a song with thirty other kids and the boy sitting next to me will suddenly start a conversation about his dinner last night and how much he likes beans. Or maybe we’re about to say the opening prayer and a little girl pulls her legs up and says, “I have a hole in my tights right here,” pointing to her crotch. Or maybe another girl will announce that she would like to be called ‘Ladybug Princess Annabelle’ today. We had no idea that was coming! How could we have known? Children have their own warped visions of life that we may never know about (I know, I kept a journal in middle school).

I do not know much about elementary education theory or practice, but I think Rousseau was on to something, here. Unfortunately, the state of our education policy does not allow for immeasurable practices that lack appropriate structure to permitted into public schools. Perhaps one day the godless liberals will succeed in destroying the Protestant Work Ethic and the Lancaster method of competition and standardization in schools; then we may see radical educational reform (not that I really want to see the radical godless liberals take power). Maybe I should post my thoughts on Lancaster, grading, and the GPA...

Hurry, get the kleenex box...or a monkey wrench

2009-01-30T22:14:00.006-07:00

No, it's not becasue I'm going to watch Cool Runnings or Horton Hears a Who. I'm sick, and tissue needs to be in hand nearly 100% of the time or snot will be all over my face. It's like a leaky faucet that I just can't contain. Before you know it, I'll flood the apartment, or campus, or Provo. Seriously, I had no idea that this much snot existed within me. Once I think it's done, it starts up again and just keeps on coming; sort of like the Barry Bonds steroids issue on ESPN.

What I really think I need is one of these:

Yep, that'll do it. I think I can get it from Harriet Carter.

Shooting an Elephant

2009-01-25T14:45:00.006-07:00

I recently read George Orwell's "Shooting and Elephat" for my British Government class. I advise everyone to do the same (http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph )It's a small short story about a policeman (possibly Orwell) in the Imperial Indian Police during British occupancy of India. It's about an elephant who goes into its must period and tramples many straw huts, killing one man. The main idea is the struggle the policeman has with whether or not he ought to kill the elephant or not. He does not want to, but when he asked someone to fetch him an elephant gun (to protect him) a crowd started to follow him, for they were sure he would shoot the elephant.

THE policeman has come, through his service in Burma, to disagree with the imperialistic reasons he’s there. In his mind’s battle of whether or not to shoot the elephant, he discovers himself in the position of a colonizing tyranny. He did not want to shoot the elephant, but the natives expect him to kill it. This predicament is similar to that of any colonizing country. As an imperial ruling entity, the natives expect certain actions in these situations, and the ruling entity will likely never disappoint, for it is important that they always deliver an impressive performance to the natives. What is expected by the natives isn’t always what is in the nature of the ruling entity to do, but they will do it in order to keep up the appearance of a tyrannical imperial force. Orwell explains that in this way the tyrant destroys his own freedom because he can only choose to do what the natives expect. For this reason Orwell defies his own will and kills the elephant.
THE extent of my exposure to information regarding the British occupation of India is limited to sources in entertainment media. In every movie I’ve seen, however, there is very little sympathy for the Indians. The British are depicted as arrogant and condescending towards the savage natives. The policeman’s character, after observing the brutal oppression of the natives, became overwhelmed with guilt and came to disapprove of imperialism, and despised the work he did in support of such a cause. His opposition to his work was not vocalized, as he “had to think out (his) problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.” Because of this imposed silence the policeman describes, it could be understood that the there are many others in the same situation that feel the same way, but fail to express themselves. After all, even the policeman succumbed to shooting the elephant in order to save himself from humiliation. To be in a position of authority requires one to assume the tyrannical nature of the post and act as the tyranny would in order to meet the expectations of the ruled.
AFTER just three years in Burma Orwell resigned his post and took up a pen name and a pen to begin his career as a writer. This was one of his first works, which begs me to wonder if Orwell had sold his birthright (his successful career in the Indian Imperial Police) for a pot of message. In addition to the short narrative on the comparison to the British imperial cause that the policeman found, I found an innuendo of this clash of wills (the policeman’s vs. the natives) in his own actions. He could not, for instance, test the elephant’s behavior to determine if it was still mad. Even though he did not fear the elephant (“a white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened”), he could not approach the elephant because if something did go wrong he would be made a laughing-stock. “That,” he says, “would never do.”

I picked up more symbolism of imperialism in the story than the comparison Orwell explains himself. The policeman had never shot an elephant before, and did not know the most effective way to take one down, but out of fear of humiliation he made a guess at where the brain might be and pulled the trigger. The policeman fired three more shots to where he thought the brain was and his last two to where he thought the hear was. The elephant would not die, but laid on its side breathing deeply--even after emptying his Winchester into it, too. Bells went off in my head about the American occupation in Iraq: an imperialist venture set off without a clear indication of how long it might take to subdue the opponent. It has taken much longer than expected with no foreseeable end in sight. The policeman gave up and left the dying elephant in misery while the village people sat like vultures ready to pick the elephant dry. If our new president keeps his promises, we’ll be out of Iraq, leaving their young secular democracy to the wiles of whatever extremist factions that lay in wait to destroy.
BRITAIN had a similar situation with an elephant in India known as Mahatma Gandhi. Through his leadership, India became as an elephant in its must period, but through civil disobedience and non-violent protest. As much as the British shot at it, it would not die, and ended up leaving before his death. Orwell had no idea this would be the case, as it all came to pass much later in history, but I believe that because it has proven analogous of the United States’ invasion and reconstruction in Iraq and the outcome of the British in India countries ought to consider the repercussions of imperialism from the point of view of both the gunman and the elephant as Orwell did.

Born to Run

2009-01-17T12:09:00.003-07:00

In August 2003 I arrived at Campus Plaza. One week passed and I hadn't run, then I was bored one morning and just did it. As I returned from my 30 minute jog and hopped in a cold shower. As I stood in the shower feeling the chilled water pelt my whole body I heard an imagined voice whisper into my ear, "Welcome back to the fold." It had been a long time since I had last run. I ran the two mile in league finals, but never trained for it, and after Sections I was done with everything. It got hot in California and I didn't run, because I had nothing to run for. Standing in the shower that day, feeling my body's tire and satisfaction with my run, I knew who I really was. I was a runner.

So I began a training program called '5k at 5:00', and ran every evening. After I started getting my groove back I started running 5 miles at 5:00. I was back in the swing of things, even when it got colder than my running shoes had ever experienced. A column in the Salt Lake Tribune caught my attention when the columnist was training for a marathon and would report a weekly training log. I saw his first week's schedule and decided I could start out like that, and from that time on my marathon training began.

I registered for the Santa Cruz Marathon to be held on June 5th and trained well. School ended and I went home. After being home for two days I ran a scheduled 30 miler on a hot late April day in central California. Running had just become something that I did. Distance did not phase me--especially shorter distances. Two days later I was offered a job at Prima Frutta Packing. I would be working seven days a week, 16 hour days when they started picking Bings locally for the last few weeks. The projected final day of the season was June 5th. I knew that I would not have time to run, and therefore would not be ready for my race. But I also knew that I needed this money to pay for a greater part of my mission and also have some for tuition when I got home. So I took the job and laid my marathon aspirations to rest.

I don't remember running the rest of my time at home preceding my mission. I didn't get to run that much on my mission. When I came home to Idaho I ran. It was cold and windy, but I stuck it out. In Provo I tried, but failed miserably to keep up a consistant running schedule. Until today.

Today I ran five miles , ending a 15 mile week. I decided to take a jogging class this semester. The class requires that I run 140 miles throughout the semester. I needed a running schedule, so I looked online and found a good half-marathon schedule. I decided a couple of years ago that training for the marathon may not have made my body very happy with me at times, and that I didn't really want to do that. Besides, I ran 26.2 miles on my own a couple of times, and there's nothing that exciting about it. Running a half marathon is just as legit a race to train for. So I called up Scott E and asked if he was in, too. He's as fast as (if not faster than) I was when I was his age, and he's in. So late in the summer we'll face off.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm intimidated by his speed. Especially when I started my easy runs coming in with 8-minute miles. But I'm not pushing it at all-I don't want to risk injury. Once I'm accustomed to running greater distances and for longer periods of time (like my 40-minute job today) then I'll switch training schedules to work on my speed. Will I be as fast as Scott? Well, probably not, seeing that he still has track training in his sights. But that'll be shorter distance. When he's running two mile races, I'll be running twelve mile LSD (long slow distance) on Saturdays. Come May I'll have the endurance and he'll have the speed. Possibly by August we'll be on the same track.

The Longest Day

2008-12-25T22:48:00.003-07:00

Paul Anka, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Richard Burton, and Sean Connery had a long day back in '62. That's what I feel like now. Christmas takes a lot out of you. A very taxing holiday. My mother told me that it's even longer with little kids, although I won't have to worry about it for a while. Courtney and I tried to inflict slight heart attacks to my parents by unwrapping a little infant onsey from her to me. My mom was speechless, as I tried to be, too. Coach had just got on the phone with Todd. Couldn't fool them. Oh well, it was worth the try.
All in all it was a great day with the family. From breakfast, to sledding, to Cool Runnings and Horton Hears a Who, to doing three puzzles, it was a fantastic--howbeit long--day. A fantastic Christmas. Last night my mom read us the Santa Bag story which shows us hidden meanings of Christ's birth in the commercial and pagan symbols of Christmas (stars, trees, wreaths, ornaments, candles, bells and candy canes). It's good to remember that we're doing this out of respect for the birth of the Savior of the world. It's nice to be with family when celbrating the birth of he who brough salvation to the family,

Another Day to Celebrate America

2008-11-27T02:32:00.002-07:00

I heard that the average American will eat 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving day. How else could we possibly celebrate a day of thanks but through gluttany? As Jim Gaffigan put it,

"Thanksgiving, we didn't even try to come up with a tradition; the tradition is we overeat. 'Hey, how 'bout for thanksgiving we just eat a lot?' We do that every day. 'Oh...what if we eat a lot with people who annoy the hell out of us?'"

And eating with family makes many Americans more thankful for their independence from family. And what's the last peice of the puzzle? Beating the crap out of people: football. We watch football, we play football, we talk football--football is the day. These are the founding principles of our nation- independence, gluttany and explosive entertainment. Definitely a perfect fit as a national holiday in our blessed football.

So let's express our American patronage by eating, fighting and tackling this weekend. Such is the spirit of the day, and the spirit of our country.

10-2 Part III

2008-11-23T18:28:00.009-07:00

I went to the Holy War yesterday thanks to an awesome friend who bailed me out on a night I was getting kicked out of the house anyways. Courtney was going to kick me out for the night so she could throw a bridal shower for Hilary, and Andrew came over to take me away to Salt Lake where we would brave freezing temperatures and BCS-thirsty Ute students waiting outside for ticket sales to open the next morning. It was a great night at the front of a very, very, long line, full of hijincks and hackey sacks and obnoxious drunk guys yelling at people and breaking the tent Andrew's brother rented. In the end we all came away with tickets to the Holy War, and my anticipation was fulfilled this weekend.
Andrew and Hilary got hitched down in Manti Friday morning, and I saw them again Saturday afternoon when I got to Rice-Eccles stadium. Andrew, his brother Patrick and I painted B-Y-U on our chests, and in the midst of the student section cheered loudly all night long. In the third quarter, Max Hall did something useful and ran into the endzone to cut the Utes' lead to three, 27-24. We were excited, but some Utah fans felt threatened. Some of these plastered students came over to us to give us a hard time, and ended up starting a little scuffle with other Ute fans in the row below us. Security showed up to take the troublemakers away, and all was well, except while they were there Max threw another interception and Utah scored a short time afterwards. The fourth quarter only got worse, and we shivered our chins to our chests in shame, finally leaving when the clock hit 00:00.

We lost; but what an experience! A Holy War in the Utah student section, half naked with paint on my chest and good friends with me--what a night! A lot of people were disappointed with the game, I was, too. But let's face it, Max got rattled and blew the game, it's as simple as that. He's still a good player. We actually outgained Utah in the game and converted both 4th down situations. Before his five interceptions against Utah he had just 7 the entire year. But last night he couldn't handle the heat, and that's that. He had two big wins at the end of last season, but let's look at his performance.

Against Utah in last year's Holy War, Max was 17-40 with an interception and a fumble. This year he was 21-41 with 5 INTs and a fumble. He pulled off one HUGE play on 4th and 18 to make it all count and gain the glory in a game Harvey Unga gained 141 yards rushing on 23 carries. That's a big game for a freshman back. This year? He gets just 15 carries...and amasses 116 yards! That's nearly 8 yards a carry! To take a line from the great Keyshawn Johnson, give him the d*** ball! Our other brother in our Tongan backfield, Fui Vakapuna, gained 36 yards on four touches- 8 yards a carry! Max ran for a career high 42 yards on 7 scrambles. Hey Bronco, RUN THE FREAKIN' BALL!!!!!!! Sure Max fell apart and practically giftwrapped the ball for Utah defenders at times, but more blame needs to be aimed at the Offensive Coordinator, Robert Anae, bless his heart, for calling disproportionately more pass than run plays against a Utah team we've ran well on in the past. Don't get me wrong, Max DID flounder the game with his poor performance, but running on first down would have helped out a few times, too.

The TCU game was a straight up disaster, but Max put up similar stats, 22-42, but only 2 INTs and 6 times sacked. I'm not going to dwell on that game, but the situation was bad there, too. In 2006 we beat a ranked TCU team in their house on our way to the MWC title, destroying their season. And this year they did it to us. Same thing with Utah. In 2006 we came into their house and came back with a drive in the last minute of the game to win on a miracle play while time expired. John Beck’s greatness left some bitter tastes in the mouths of away teams that year, and it came back to get us now.

So Max Hall was exposed as the not-so big game quarterback he actually already was. The defense actually came out to play after the half, too, holding Utah on consecutive drives, but in the fourth quarter, Max just couldn't keep the offense on the field long enough to keep us in the game.

Our third straight 10-2 isn't quite as good as it sounds. Our 9 wins against Div. 1-A teams came against teams with a combined 34-70 record. We lost to teams with a combined 22-2 record. Only one team we beat ended with a record over .500 (Air Force). We played close games against Washington (0-11), UNLV (4-8), and Colorado State (6-6). What's up with that? We got what we deserved. Sure our offense is pretty incredible, but the defense let our opponents in the game nearly every time. We now prepare for an invitation to the Armed Forces Bowl against Houston, Rice or Tulsa of Conference USA. BYU fans will whine and complain about things, but let's face it: we're getting what we played for.

We're only the one's we've been waiting for if we sit around waiting forever like those stupid democrats did

2008-11-07T18:07:00.003-07:00

I never was too into McCain. "America, specifically you dumb republicans who let him win the primaries in the first place, John McCain is a loser. He lost to the village idiot of Texas in the 2000 primaries, how could anyone expect him to succeed against a young, charismatic, eloquent, intelligent intellectual. The only reason I wanted to see McCain in office is to provide parity in our branches of government. But he caught some bad breaks (Sarah Palin was a good idea at the time, but I think most Americans would actually prefer Tina Fey, now) and failed over (First debate) and over (Second debate) and over (Third debate) again to convince America that he was a better candidate than his opponent.
I hate the Yankees. I hate them with a passion. But when they won the world series in 1998, they deserved it. Their team earned it. Their opponent, the San Diego Padres, did not deserve it. Barack Obama beat John McCain. He beat him in fundraising, he beat him in debates, he beat him in the popular vote, he beat him in the electoral college vote. Obama knew he was going to win weeks ago. This wasn’t a Rocky Balboa fight that traded head shots and combinations and ended in the last round, the result we saw Tuesday night had been on deck for a while. Now I’m not a Democrat or liberal by any means, but John McCain got smoked like Michael Johnson in that exhibition 150 meter race against Donovan Bailey back in 1997, and I respected the fastest man in the world being Canadian, and I’ll respect the leader of the free world being a Democrat.
A lot of people here in Provo are downright scared of what's going to happen. It makes me sick. Not only do they not hold faith in the limits our constitution places on government, but also a lack of faith in the role of Americans as the Bloodthirsty Capitalist Pigs of the World. This country has had Democrats in the White House before. Some were successful, some were not; all of them had job approvals higher than George W. Bush’s present rating (but none as high as his rating right after 9/11: ). The country has been through hard economic times with both Democrats and Republicans--it happens. The country changes every once in a while. What type of change can we expect in 2009? A couple more liberal supreme court justices, a few liberal reforms here and there, I can’t say for sure, but it won’t be as radical as those who live in fear believe. He can’t get universal healthcare; privatized healthcare has congress in their pocket. He’s not going to raise taxes on the rich--heck, he’s already reneged on that issue three days after election. He’s liberal, but he’s no idiot.
People start quoting scriptures from the Book of Mormon and the Revelation of John, and I think of them, too. “Have mercy upon the rulers of our land; may those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever” (D&C 109:54). This isn’t the prayer we use just when a Democrat is in the Oval Office, it’s for all our leaders at all times. Let faith replace doubt and selfless service replace selfish strivings. And hope replace fear. “Whosoever belonged to my church need not fear” (D&C 10:55). As we “lift where we stand”, as the good Saints did in California this election, and serve our fellow men and our God, His perfect love will sweep out all fear (1 John 4:18).
I don’t think he’s the antichrist. I don’t think he’s America’s savior. I never had the light shine down on me and give me an epiphany that I should vote for him. This Land has a history of failing to live up to its “Promised” status, and who‘s in charge usually bears little sway in the way most Americans live their daily life. So why should it now?

'Tis the Season

2008-10-26T09:01:00.007-06:00

It is a great season for dressing up as silly things and getting away with it without anyone thinking anything weird about it. Courtney and I crashed the 6th Ward's Halloween party (I know we're married, but they're all our friends, still, and we're going to our own ward's party, too, so that ought to count for something). Here are some pictures of the great event.

We were Toad and Toadette--you know, from Mario

Erin and her roomates were Disney villains

We had a lot of friends get yoked into the Beauty and the Beast theme by Carin, who came as the Rose. My favorite, however, is Taran's interpretation of Cogsworth. People guessed things like Morpheous or Neo, but no, he's the clock. Carin made Lindsey's elegant Belle dress the day before, and Steve's Lumier costume was all Hilary.

Hyrum put together his robot in, like, two hours. An excellent job, wouldn't you say? He based it off of The Humans are Dead robots in the Flight of the Concordes video. It probably took them about two hours, too.

I'm Back, and I'm Married

2008-09-25T12:33:00.014-06:00

After two back injuries, four weeks of the most demanding class I've ever had, working two jobs and somewhere in the middle of it all getting married and taking a lovely honeymoon in beautiful Monterey, California, I have found my way back to the weblog. There are issues to be discussed, people praise and people to harass, and too many people got off easy while I was on my big sabbatical.

While all that political, sports and religious issues need to be tackled, I should probably say a few words about my marriage. One word in particular comes to mind- spectacular! I reccommend marriage to all those who are going without right now. I know it's not easy to get here, but it IS possible.

Courtney and I (There are a number of these that will not need descriptions)

Us and my family

With Courtney's family

Showing what we've got--Dang, Hyrum

Me and my boys- Straight Studly

Taking a break to play the celestial sport with my groomsmen

Under the glares of the bride's maids

That's plenty of photos for now. See, it was great! You, too can have this happiness in your life, so try it--Marriage.

What brings us together today

2008-08-18T00:27:00.005-06:00

What brings us together is what has been keeping me separated from posting. I feel no shame in that. But how does it do it? Marriage and weddings have such an effect on people. I'm just over a week away from tying the great eternal knot, and I've seen good friends do it recently, as well, and I've observed so much. Young girls giggling uncontrollably when they're all alone or talking with friends about hair, cake, rings and dresses or taking captive their intended man, the both of them becoming dead to friends of the old life they had. I've acted a little differently as well, I'm sure, but it's harder for one to observer their self than others. The prospect of being united with someone you love is a joyous outlook. Weddings are happy occasions, no need to bicker and argue over who killed who. How couldn't someone be so happy? But I'm in a different world right now, for Courtney and I have been engaged under the cover of the great bubble that is BYU, and look forward to a nice day for a white wedding; a nice day to start again. Our engagement is a little different than others in the world, and it seems to me to have quite an effect on the way we are and how we feel right now.

I called a good friend from high school last year and learned she just got engaged to a good man. When I learned the wedding was set for July, I was surprised at how soon that would be. She quickly reminded me that it was next July. Oh. Okay. That works too. It seemed like a long time to be engaged, but things are quite a bit different outside of the bubble.

Courtney and I officially began our engagement March 1st of this year and set a marriage date for the end of August. This was to be a long engagement by BYU standards. A number of my friends got engaged months after us and are already married. The average engagement at the Y is five months, in contrast to a national average of fifteen months. Most bridal magazines suggest a year for the proper planning of the proper wedding of a modern couple. And Courtney thought six months was a long time. So why is it that the engagements are so much shorter at BYU?

Sure shorter engagements may be responsible for more stressed-out bridezillas and a handful of unprepared youngins out on their own before they knew what they were doing, but there is a very reasonable explanation for shorter engagements. And it's not that everyone getting married is a sex-craved virgin who starts feeling immense feelings of intimacy in their first relationship after their two year mission, during which time they didn't even think about talking to any girls about anything other than going to church and reading the Book of Mormon. The average age of men at BYU when they get married is 23, two years after returning from their mission. That's not a very reasonable explanation anyways. The reason is this:

Couples at BYU will most likely be married in one of the church's 100+ temples, wherein the authority of God to seal on earth what will be sealed on heaven forges eternal bonds between man and wife, and extends to the children to be born into this covenant in the future, binding them as well together into their eternal family. This is God's plan for his children, that they receive these great eternally-lasting blessings and return to Him to live with their families in His kingdom. In order to enter the temple, one must be living the standards of the church, and keeping the covenants they made at the time of their baptism. One of these standards and covenants is to live the law of chastity. As soon as a couple commits to each other to be married, Satan will attack them with everything he can to persuade them to abandon their covenants and dirty their hands, to keep them from living worthy to enter the holy temple. The longer the wait, the stronger the opposition.

Yes, it may be harder to plan and organize a highly extravagant wedding, but these couples (including myself and my bride-to-be) aren't in it for the day. We do it for every day after the wedding day. Everything that happens outside the temple is just a celebration and only complementary to the main event, which is the sealing of two souls together for eternity.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said in a stake conference, "If you could be with your eternal companion right now, wouldn't you want to find them as soon as possible?" I could do things the world's way. Courtney and I could have moved in with each other and explored the possibility of living with each other every waking moment before deciding to be married. We could have made a mockery of a holy ordinance by trying to cleave to one another and become one marriage. We could have mocked the powers of procreation given to mortal man by participating in premarital sexual relations. We could have waited until I was done with school to even consider marriage as a possibility. But we didn't. We couldn't; not knowing what we know. We know there is strength in numbers. We know there is strength in the covenants of God. We know that God's laws govern happiness, not because he rewards us for doing silly tricks like abstinence, prayer and prohibiting tobacco and alcohol like dogs doing tricks, but because we know the laws are a prescription for natural happiness and a satisfying life. We love each other and we know marriage will bring us closer to each other and to God. It's progress. It's all about progress.

Say it ain't so, Steve!

2008-07-19T01:59:00.008-06:00

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Steven Page, lead singer for the Canadian rock band, The Barenaked Ladies, has been arrested for possession of cocaine. Following a night of fighting with his girlfriend and getting totally plastered, she drove him to her place, where he pulled out a five dollar bill and the powder and went to work. The black and whites stopped in to see about a car door that was left open, and from the doorway observed the situation. Steven's words, "Yeah, it's cocaine."

Wow. Sixteen years into their existence, just after releasing an incredible children's music album, the band is finally stained. They were so clean- or were they? I'd rather not think about it. But lets take this time to look at other famous celebrity surprises.

1966-Sandy Koufax annonces retirement

His ten year career seemed too short for the amazing stuff he had.

1969ish-The Beatles dissolve

People cried for this one all around the world. I know I made tears in heaven over this one.

1987- Lawrence Taylor tests positive for cocaine

Hey, the man just won the 'ship, and instead of going to Disneyland like everyone else, he just wanted to get loaded. I don't know how disappointed anyone was, but it provided a great line for him in Adam Sandler's "The Waterboy", when he told some pee-wee football players, "Remember kids, don't do crack," in response to some dumb remark made by Sandler's character, Bobby Boucher.

1988-Ben Johnson's juiced in Seoul

Hooray breaking speed records! Boo steroids!

He wasn't the first.

And he certainly wasn't the last.

1993-Michael Jordan retires

Very surprising, very disappointing, and just plain out sad for those of us who based our entire basketball world around him. I don't know how I recovered.

1995-Michael Jordan returns from retirement- with #45!

Now I remember. He eventually wised up and changed the jersey back, and started winning championships again.

1997-Ellen Degeneres is gay

Whatever.

1998-Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky

That's not what she said...

1998 (Seven months later)- Bill Clinton DID have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky

Wait, but didn't you tell us you didn't? I'm so confused!

2002-N*Sync breaks up

Finally!

2006-Lance Bass is gay.

I knew it!

2006-Brett Favre retires

Yeah right...

2007-Brett Favre retires. Again

Sure...

2008-Brett Favre texts the Packers GM and wants to play ball

That's what I thought.

And now this. Without stuff like this, what is life? Just me and people I know who actually care about me.

Heart, Reign O'er Me

2008-07-15T18:23:00.009-06:00

The big show has come and gone. We dressed up, we hit concert traffic, we rocked out, and we drove home. What happened while we did all this was an outstanding show, and it deserves a recap.

Cheap Trick

Honestly, none of us really knew too much of their stuff. I have "at Budokon" but I'm really stumped after "I want you to want me" and "Surrender". We weren't the only ones there who weren't too savvy with our Cheap Trick, but I think we all were impressed. He busted out this five-neck for "Goodnight", but only played on two necks, as far as I could tell (from my seat in the grass). The guitarist tried talking a lot to make up for the lack of audience interest, but he sounded pretty bitter through it all was all. They sounded good, though, but that's all I can say.

Heart

Now, I know they have some really rockin' hits, but I never would have guessed, going into the night, that this would be such an amazing part of the show. They started the show with "Straight on to You" and shredded the guitar on "Magic Man" to really put the crowd in a good mood. They slipped into some softer stuff, playing "Dog and Butterfly" and "These Dreams", but then went into a synthesizer solo. I recognized the chords and went wild when I realized they were going to perform The Who's "Love Reign O'er Me". I went wild, and felt like the only one as I screamed the opening blood curdling "Love" with Ann Wilson. It was a great cover that did the real thing justice and rocked like it should.

They ended the set with "Barracuda", but of course came back for an encore. I was expecting them to play "Crazy on You" and go home, but Nancy came out with a mandolin and started plucking out Led Zeppelin's "Going To California". Great cover. Ann Wilson can sing like a man, and it's okay. It's awesome, actually. Those two covers really made the night for me. I was impressed.

Journey

Now for a band with a lead singer who's a man that sounds like a woman. Although the great Steve Perry may be done with the outfit, their new addition, Arnel Pineda, nailed the vocals all night long. It sounded like the greatest hits CD--but it wasn't. No, since Pineda's return the group has put together a newly released album, and played a few tracks from that. The new stuff actually didn't sound that bad, and I'm seriously considering buying it.

Aside from the promotional tracks, every song was a hit. From "Don't Stop Believing" to "Any Way You Want It" Journey rocked as the audience sang along, but my favorites were deep tracks "Stone in Love" and "Escape". Journey doesn't get enough credit for their rock-out abilty, what with ballads like "Lights", "Open Arms", "Faithfully" and "Send Her My Love", but Neal Schon can play that guitar. They certainly proved to be the main attraction, but left me a little miffed when they left without playing "Lovin', Touchin' Squeezin'". If not for their great altogether show, I would have left so angry. But I'm okay. Just not as good as I could have been.

Overall, I give the show 4 out of 5 guitars. Good game.

Freedom, Fireworks, and Fried Oreos

2008-07-06T10:10:00.006-06:00

The fourth day of the seventh month represents an american legacy. Independence, gluttany and blowing crap up. These three rights are inalienable, and are available to all who enter the gates of freedom into the great country of America. The founding fathers wanted this for us. The great influencer of the founding fathers, John Locke (no, not the bald guy on Lost), described these rights as being life, liberty and property, and Jefferson like the phrase "the pursuit of happiness", but what they really meant to say were the three rights I identified.

Independence: We are all blessed with freedom in this great country. Freedom to vote, freedom to be an anarchist; freedom to worship the God of heaven and earth, freedom to worship Oprah; freedom to listen to Yanni, freedom to rock; freedom to be understanding and equal, freedom to join hate groups and burn crosses. And we can be as independent as we want. We can live independent of government subsidies or welfare checks; independent of a party line or government propoganda. Independent from each other; independent of ourselves. Yes, this is Freedom.

Gluttany: We can use resources like nothing else. And we do. Money? Can you say "National Debt"? Food? Yeah, we're obese. Gas? We guzzle. Energy? Anyone remember the "Rolling Blackouts"? Yep, America is all about gluttany. And what's not to love about that?

Blowing Crap Up: That's right. This country was founding upon destruction. Throwing tea off boats, beating the crap out of redcoats, and flipping off King George. The rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, it all gives proof that are country is still here. As long as things are exploding, America is thriving. Some of our greatest heroes are the Chinese, Enola Gay, and Louis Feiser (who discovered napalm). Even anti-American Americans who protest gluttany, do it fine fashion, exploding Hummers. We love blowing crap up.

And thus, this is how it panned out for me. I went to a free hot springs, pigged out on bleu cheeseburgers and fried oreos, and watched an incredible fireworks show, followed by me exploding some stuff of my own.

God bless the USA

Live Music Rocks

2008-06-29T00:43:00.006-06:00

I've been pretty pumped about this Good Morning Maxfield concert for a week now. Listened to their music online and even watched some Youtube clips. But when I walked into that auditorium tonight, it was entirely different. Live music is better than recorded music.

It was a great show, and they were followed by Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band, whose music I had never heard previously. They were an older band- been on the scene for 12 years now, have had a top 40-hit and put on a show on stage. My goodness. They made an amazing cover of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" inturrupted by some AC/DC and Metallica. Although most of their stuff was borderline country, they put on such a good live show that I actually didn't feel like vomitting. It was actually a straight-up great show I'd reccomend to anyone.

Live music makes the hair on my arms stand up. It can be amazing beyond all beauty. But it can also suck. But that's what you get when you ask rockin' bands like Foreigner and Styx to open for you.

Two more weeks until the Cheap Trick-Heart-Journey show. The anticipation builds.

Freedom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-06-23T00:02:00.003-06:00

With the season finally over, I found relief on the sunny shores of California. For three days it was quality time with the family, the ocean, and the boogie board. I was unfortunately joined by the sun, which did a number on my skin. I went to church today looking like a leper. I told people I was auditioning for a minor role in Jesus Christ Superstar. Unfortunately, with my moustache my ethnicity is mistaken more for one found south of the border than the Gaza strip, so the audition didn't turn out that well.

I know nothing of world event right now. I'll let it all soak in this next week. Until then, I have nothing to rant about. I do, however, have an exceptional review of the best album of the year. Who made such a thing? Why, Canada's finest, of course. The Barenaked Ladies have introduced Snacktime!, an album full of songs for all the kids. It is incredible, and I advise all to purchase not only the cd, but the storybook of lyrics (illustrated by keyboardist Kevin Hearn) as well. This link goes to the website where you can view the music video from the song "789" (it looks like it came straight from Sesame Street) and hear the song "Snacktime".

http://www.bnlmusic.com/snacktime/

This is a candidate for greatest album of the century. Search YouTube for their songs "Drawing" and "Pollywog in a Bog", which will come out soon, as well.

This is The End

2008-05-26T10:11:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was the gap between picking in the South and the North (aka here), and today the Bings will begin to roll in. Yesterday we nearly ran out of fruit, but that won't happen again. It'll just keep on coming in untill one day it stops. And the next day we'll finish. But I don't have to worry about that for another three weeks.

Yes, this is the end. Not even close to the end of cherry season, but the end of life as I know it. I'll be in the shed for 17 hours a day. It will pass, though; all cherry seasons end.

The Last Action Hero's Big Gamble

2008-05-21T00:54:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I'm the coach of a baseball team that is spending a lot of time in the basement. We have an extremely large fan base who put a lot of money into our mismanaged bureaucratic organization. Because of this erroneous financial management we needed to save some money and cut funding to all parts of the system. The most important organization affected by this is the farm system. This has been a major problem and has left our team struggling to find and develop young talent on our own. In short, every team from A-ball to the pros sucks.

Obviously a cut would only extend our slump, so the owner of the franchise decided to bring more funding into the team by using revenue from his sub par Las Vegas casino.

It would still be too much of a cut, but the owner has projected that more people will go to his casino with more aggressive marketing, raising its revenue.

Do I feel comfortable about this? Don't bet on it. Is it real? No, of course not; baseball is much too competitive for risks like that. But Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't think it's too risky for California's feeble education system. In his newly proposed budget for the Golden State, the Kindergarten Cop put the handcuffs on funding for students of all ages. But don't worry, we will fund it with more revenue from the state lottery.

(The following is a monologue from the Governator)

Oh, I know da projection is big. We will market the lottery more aggressively and add more fun scratcher games no one can win. You don't believe me?!?! Get Down! More budget cuts coming! Don't believe me? Grab my hand! Follow me into a dependency on the vices of human nature to support the education of young minds? Come on! Get in da chopper! (This is the part where you look at the flaming helicopter with only two and a half rotors left, shake your head and move to Idaho)