CSotD: First you laugh, then you think
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Caulfield brings up something I wrote about back in the ’90s, when research began emerging that adolescents don’t wake up until mid-morning. I proposed a ten-to-five schoolday.
The objections from kids largely dealt with sports practice, which I countered could be at noon as it is in several other countries where lunch is an hour or so long rather than 20 minutes. They also brought up coming home in winter darkness, which was a red herring, since they already come and go in darkness in our northern latitudes.
It’s hardly the only problem with our schools, which operate like 19th century factories, but California and Florida have mandated later start times, though more like 8:30 than the 11:30 Caulfield suggests.
Still on the education beat, I was a lab assistant in biology class, and our teacher had us dissect a sheep’s head which he then used in class. I remember thinking that brain surgeons had better have more specialized tools than we did, since getting through the skull was a real challenge.
A trapper gifted us with a skinned but otherwise intact beaver, which we didn’t get around to working with until around noon. It was an extremely brief attempt and what we learned was that there’s a really good reason professional specimens are preserved in formaldehyde.
As a young lad, Theodore Roosevelt assembled a natural history museum in his bedroom, in which he exhibited various animals and plants, together with his notes on them. It began when he was eight and encountered a dead seal at a local fishmarket, the skull of which he extracted and preserved.
Two years later, his father helped found the American Museum of Natural History. Thus the child was father to the man in a way Wordsworth hadn’t meant.
Roosevelt himself was a founder of the Bronx Zoo, which fostered a herd of bison later introduced to the West in a successful effort to avoid their extinction. He used to give copies of John Burroughs‘ nature books to poor children in NYC in hopes of encouraging them to find a way to get out into the country and see nature for themselves.
He and John Muir were allies, though Roosevelt was a conservationist and Muir was a preservationist, which distinction didn’t always mesh perfectly.
Still on the education topic, this Barney & Clyde reminded me of a saying I wish I could find the source of, but which is a bit of advice for college presidents:
Be nice to your A student and he’ll say something nice about you at graduation. Be nice to your C student and he’ll build you a dormitory.
A life-altering memory was sparked by the story arc in Betty this past week.
The road around the lake at home was short enough for a casual walk but long enough for a deep conversation.
On one such walk, my father explained what a leveraged-buyout was and how Ling-Temco-Vought‘s acquisition of J&L Steel was going to destroy our mine, and thus our town, a generation sooner than previously projected.
We had another conversation a year or two later in which I challenged him to stand up for his own values, and he abandoned the creeping meatball so he could do something more honorable with the last decade of his working life.
Don’t do it, Lola! My grandfather felt that telling stories of the old days made him seem like a boring old man, but I used to drag reminiscences out of him anyway, and he had some great memories, being able to remember the first motor car he ever saw but also the Moon landing.
After he died, I asked my father about a fascinating but complex story Grandpa had told me about working in the mines, then going to college, then going to France in WWI, because I was trying to remember the details. Turned out I was the only person he’d ever told the story to, so those details are lost.
Don’t ever stop remembering when.
Leaping up to modern times, and a bit beyond, I’m sympathetic to Pam’s complaint, particularly in regard to crackers, where the choice is saltines or tiny quantities of overpriced fancy crackers and nothing in between.
Fortunately, I’ve long since learned how easy it is to chop up tomatoes and onions and toss in a little meat or shellfish and forego the jarred pasta sauces.
It always makes me feel like Clemenza teaching young Michael Corleone how to make spaghetti sauce, which in turn reminds me of living in a house full of people, including a con who had learned to cook in the joint.
He made great spaghetti sauce, but in institutional quantities, so that when he made spaghetti, we ate spaghetti for a week or so.
But it was a whole lot better than Ragu or Prego.
Well, yes, sorta maybe. If you round up and the store turns the money over to a charity that helps her feed herself or meet her rent, you’ve helped her, but it’s not that direct.
There’s a persistent, toxic rumor that stores get a tax deduction from round-up donations, and they don’t. However, I’ve seen people rack up a grocery bill of $146.87 and decline to part with another 13 cents, so I guess even a bogus excuse works if you desperately need one.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I don’t think it’s sexist to point out that, on the whole, women are more attuned to presentation and atmosphere than men. They’re the gatherers and we’re the hunters, so while we were out slaying antelope they were learning to make medicine, turn porcupine quills into jewelry and hybridize a type of grass into what we recognize as corn.
The lesson being that when you buy her a present, you should wrap it and not just hand it to her in the paper bag from the store. And she’ll serve you chai instead of Maxwell House, which you ought to appreciate. Out loud.
Granted, when she enthuses over strappy shoes, you don’t have to pretend to know what that means.
But don’t roll your eyes unless you have some desire to channel Hank Williams:
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