OFF THE WALL...: August 2009

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Our Trip to Lake Tahoe/Early August

COLUMN: Some Things Have Changed

By Tobin Barnes
I’m starting my thirty-fourth year teaching high school students, so it’s natural that I often get the question, “Have the kids changed?”

Yep, I’m definitely the guy to ask. I’ve had a lot of experience with them.

During any given year during my career, conservatively estimating, I have had 150 individual students in all my classes. Take that times the thirty-three academic years I’ve completed, and that’s a whopping 4950 students.

Wow! It’s almost staggering. That’s a lot of potential impact that I, or any other secondary teacher, could have had over the course of a career.

Again, conservatively estimating—I hope this is very conservative—if I, or any other long-term teacher, has had a positive effect on only ten percent of all those students, that’s still a creditable 490 people.

That would be pretty good success in anybody’s book.

And as I said, I hope I’ve had more.

Obviously, I like being around teenagers. The last thirty-three years would have been pure hell if I didn’t. Like dogs, they can sense fear.

Uh huh, it’s not for everybody. With the wrong attitude on your part, teenagers can drive you barking mad, as they say in England.

Most of the time, however, I can get over that hurdle without too much effort and can then appreciate all the good qualities of teenagers. As a matter of fact, fairly well-adjusted teenagers are my favorite people. You just can’t beat their spontaneity, enthusiasm, and love of life. (It’s too bad that much of that seemingly gets doused in the next twenty years for all too many.)

But back to the question, “Have the kids changed?”

My short answer is always, “No.”

That basic bundle of interest and energy has not changed over the course of thirty-three years. There were great kids then that I admired and respected and there are great kids now. And, of course, there were confused, disruptive kids then and there are those kinds of kids now, though not really all that many in either time.

Teenagers often get a bad rap for various shenanigans—yes, in my time, too, and before—but the vast majority are firmly in the process of becoming fine people.

So, no, the teenagers themselves have not changed. But what has changed is their environment, and sometimes I wonder how they turn out as well as they do. Because of technology and mass media, kids today are exposed to things we didn’t know existed until maybe adulthood or beyond.

Sure, young people—and old people, for that matter—have been screwing up their lives since caveman days. There have always been ways and means to drag yourself down, if that’s what you’re looking for.

The difference is that the ways and means nowadays have multiplied almost exponentially. But it also must be said that opportunities for people to extend and fulfill themselves have multiplied, too.

There’s so much out there now: great, wonderful, good, bad, ugly, and, yes, sinister. We didn’t know a tenth of it when we were young, and that provided us with a comforting security and a certain insulation, but it also provided physical and mental limitations. Much of that, for good or ill, is not part of the lives of young people today.

So, once again, “Have the kids changed?”

No. But I have.

In many ways, I admire and respect young people even more than I did thirty-three years ago. Teenagers today are running a very complex gantlet of modern trip wires, but despite that, I can report that most of them are doing very well with the challenges.

As The Who used to state, “The Kids Are Alright.”

Last Week's Funniest Captions

Best Caption:

“Are you trying to put words into my mouth?”

—  Posted by Robin Edmiston

Runners-up:

And so the first session of the Charlie McCarthy hearings are about to begin.

— Posted by Marc Ragovin, New York

"Howdy Doodat?"

— Posted by leapfinger

"I’m board."

— Posted by JVB

Saturday, August 29, 2009

LUCKENBACH TEXAS (Back to the basics) WORLD RECORD 1859

(Sent by Tom Cooley)

Monologue | Aired Thursday night on NBC: President Obama’s enjoying himself. He’s having his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard all week. So far — this is what the news says — so far, he’s played tennis, golf; he’s gone swimming. Now it’s rumored he may play a game of bocce ball. It’s true. In other words, America is still waiting for its first black president.

Yesterday in Arizona, Sen. John McCain had an out of control woman thrown out of a town hall meeting because she wouldn’t stop yelling at him. I’m guessing he still hasn’t patched things up with Sarah Palin.

For better or worse, these days are over for us.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Clunker?

(Sent by Joey Larson)

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

South Dakota Friends

(Sent by Tom Aldrich)
FRIENDS VS SOUTH DAKOTA FRIENDS

FRIENDS: Never ask for food.
S.D. FRIENDS: Always bring the food.

FRIENDS: Will say 'hello'.
S.D. FRIENDS: Will give you a big hug and a kiss.

FRIENDS: Call your parents Mr. and Mrs.
S.D. FRIENDS: Call your parents Mom and Dad.

FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
S.D. FRIENDS: Cry with you.

FRIENDS: Will eat at your dinner table and leave.
S.D. FRIENDS: Will spend hours there, talking, laughing, help you clear the table & do the dishes, then play dominoes or cards and just being together..

FRIENDS: Know a few things about you.
S.D. FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you..

FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that's what the crowd is doing.
S.D. FRIENDS: Will kick the whole crowds' back-ends that left you.

FRIENDS: Would knock on your door.
S.D. FRIENDS: Walk right in and say, 'I'm home!'.

FRIENDS: will visit you in jail.
S.D. FRIENDS: will spend the night in jail with you.

FRIENDS: will visit you in the hospital when you're sick
S.D.FRIENDS: will cut your grass and clean your house then come spend the night with you in the hospital and cook for you when you come home

FRIENDS: have you on speed dial
S.D. FRIENDS: have your number memorized.

FRIENDS: Are for a while.
S.D.FRIENDS: Are for life.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

COLUMN: It's a matter of packaging

Image via Wikipedia

By Tobin Barnes
Sure, it’s a tempest, but it belongs in a teapot.

Polls indicate that a massive majority of Americans want at least some, if not substantial, health care reform. For that majority, the overwhelming costs and frightening uncertainty of the current system is a nightmare that only worsens by the month.

Of course, on the other hand, a vociferously vocal minority would like to squash any such notions of any change, either because their medical bread is already currently well buttered, thank you very much, or this is a political opportunity to nail those uppity, bleeding-heart, socialist, communizing, Nazi Democrats to the wall. (Uh huh, a very strange mixture of adjectives has come into play this summer.)

But let’s consider the needs of the majority who want at least some changes. How do we bring about beneficial reform for their needs?

Do the multiple 1,000-page bills currently being bandied about in the two houses of Congress help solve the problems? Hardly. They only add to the confusion and suspicion.

In such massive bills that Congress now routinely uses for all sorts of laws and appropriations, there’s always something or numerous things for everybody to hate. But, nevertheless, the noxious weeds are always included to sway this or that holdout congressman or woman, often a selfish holdout. That’s what happens with those all-or-nothing, everything-but- the-kitchen-sink bills. You get everything, warts and all, or nothing, which oftentimes is worse.

Why not break these bills apart, especially our current number-one issue, health care reform?

I teach some American history. Easy, relax. This is going to be relatively short and painless, so stick with me. This will be a refresher for most. Besides, as Harry Truman said, “The only thing new is the history you don’t know.”

Back in pre-Civil War times, things were getting hot. The nation was coming apart at the seams over the question of the future of slavery. The acquisition of western territories was adding fuel to a fire that threatened to consume the fragile union of states.

Then, thankfully, the Compromise of 1850 cooled the agitation somewhat and delayed the inevitable Civil War for more than ten years. But those were a crucially important ten years. That time period insured that the North with its geometrically expanding economic strength and massive industrialization would be able to preserve the Union, if only it could muster the determination and leadership to accomplish that hard-won goal.

The Compromise came about through the political expertise of two men: Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas. Clay, the Great Compromiser from the border-state of Kentucky, had the overall vision of giving things to each side, North and South, but at first, included all elements in one bill. Of course, Southerners didn’t like what Northerners were getting and Northerners didn’t like what Southerners were getting. The bill was at a stalemate.

So in stepped Stephen Douglas, senator from Illinois, who broke the thing apart so that each of the elements of the overall compromise could be voted on one-by-one. That way, enough moderates could be found on one side or the other to pass each element, thus eventually passing the entire Union-saving Compromise.

How about doing the same thing with health care reform? Of course, the debate over health care may not be as cataclysmic as civil war, but we all know this reform will also produce profound effects upon the nature of our country.

So in the spirit of the Compromise of 1850, let’s start with things where there is most agreement as to failings of the current health care system. In other words, let’s simplify the issues rather than complexify them in a 1,000-page bill. For example, how about pre-existing conditions that leave gaping holes in people’s health insurance policies?

Insurance companies spend a huge percentage of health care funds ferreting out the health problems of potential policy holders that might cost the insurers profits down the road. It’s an understandable business practice, if the only business of America is business, but it’s of dubious value to the welfare of the general public who have sacrificed to make this country great.

Left without a choice, millions purchase increasingly more expensive policies with numerous troubling medical exclusions that may not help them at all when the rubber hits the road. Do we Americans want to continue that?

Sure, changing this business practice may be monetarily limiting for insurance companies, but we know for sure that the current system wrecks innocent lives every day.

So let’s have a vote in Congress. After all, it’s a republic. Up or down?

Okay, now let’s move on to another issue, health insurance policy portability. For whatever reason, people leave jobs where they have a fine health policy, but now their insurance situation is up in the air. One minute they’re fully insured, the next, who knows? Do we continue this system where health care choices determine career moves and even destroy lives? Well, let’s have a vote on a separate bill. Up or down?

Yeah, let’s concentrate on one issue at a time rather than a hundred issues, half of which, in the light of day, are not issues at all, like death panels. Gradually, maybe over the course of months, we’ll move on to even thornier issues, like the public option of government competition with private companies.

But that’s okay.

Even those issues will become clarified when isolated in the public mind from all the suspicion, name-calling and distracting blather.