Don’t be fooled. March 1st does not come after February 28. Not this year.
Leap year comes from the long tradition of confusing the heck of out the general public. Nothing messes with people more than changing time, the basic unit of measurement for practically everything…
I’m pretty much as white as they come. Other than being related to Karl Malone (through marraige), I pretty much have no smatterings of color in my family tree, so every time the issue of race comes up, I fit squarely into the “White/Caucasian” category.
In other words… it’s all my fault.
Yes, my ancestor’s ancestors were members of a culture who participated in the awful practice of buying and selling human life. They created centuries of human oppression and perpetuated such an awful practice.
But guess what: I didn’t. It wasn’t me. I don’t believe in that. I didn’t do it. And punishing me for it is just silly.
Yes, my grandfathers and great grandfathers lived in the United States during a time when we tried our hardest to keep races separated…
But guess what: I didn’t. I don’t believe that. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. And punishing me for it is just silly.
There has been a long history of racial oppression in the world. The Egyptians built their monster pyramids with slave labor. Slavery has been a major component of every eon of time. The concept of slavery is the same across all ages: the forced oppression and captivity of the weakest members of a society.
Slavery continues until today, in the form of economic slavery. High interest credit cards and loans are made to the weakest in our society, putting them at natural disadvantages and binding them for life to creditors they will never be able to satisfy. This slavery knows no race, gender or creed.
But it’s not my fault. And I don’t owe you anything. During my lifetime, I have worked to give those I have come in contact with every benefit and opportunity I have received, no matter their race or culture.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in the United States. Certainly, Dr. King’s incredible contributions to our country deserve to be recognized. And this is why… he had the courage to stand up. He inspired a movement of people to identify with their culture, take pride in their heritage, and to take a moral stand against their countrymen and government to say, “What is going on here isn’t right. We are not second class citizens.”
In this spirit, I celebrate Dr. King. I celebrate his dream and vision, and the power of the movement he led pull up his race by their bootstraps to say, “we’re not taking it anymore.” I have, in part, seen his dream realized during my lifetime.
I was raised without prejudice for race, gender or creed. I value all people equally as children of God and members of the same human race.
The biggest problem with race today is not white suppression, it is self-supression.
African-Americans have adopted the hate language of the 1960’s Caucasians to define themselves and even casually refer to each other. What would Dr. King think to walk through our schools today hearing black people refer to each other as “nigger”?
African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, etc have more money than ever to go to college, and yet Caucasians still make up the majority of those going to college. Affirmative action has been set up in the workplace to give more than due opportunities for people of minority ethnicities. The ‘white establishment’ has done everything possible to give every minority in this country a shot at a good education, a good job, and a productive life.
And yet it’s never enough.
One day I’m going to create the WhiteEyebrows scholarship fund for white male white-eyebrowed freaks…
I think Dr Bill Cosby is right. Read some of the startling statistics from his recent book on the state of the black community and it quickly becomes clear that there is cultural disease festering.
(source: NBC’s Meet the Press Interview with Tim Russert)
Now to another group, Latinos & Mexicans, who seem to have the complete opposite problems from the African-American community. The history of the African-Americans is tragic… they were drug here to work for nothing. Today, Mexicans come here at any cost, to work and be a part of our 12 trillion dollar economy, and all we can talk about is how to keep them out. What irony! For much of the country, it’s still not politically incorrect to be racist toward Latinos, even though they come here to work the hardest for the lowest wages, and sacrifice their quality of life for their families both here and where they come from.
Where is the Dr. King of the Latino community who will stand up and say, “We demand to be equal partners in this American dream”?
It’s such a complicated issue, but perhaps the reason why the American experiement continues to work is because above all else, above our race, religion, culture, background, hair style, or fingernail length, we are Americans. We subscribe to the American dream and believe in freedom, liberty, and human decency.
So for this day of commemoration, let’s put aside the divisiveness of race and remember our common American race. There is room for all races in the American dream.
I hope you are able to find the few “real posts” that are peppered between all these fabulous holiday gift ideas I have been posting recently on the blog.
Recently, I had the opportunity to perform with my choral group on the Dallas classical radio station, 101.1 WRR. We sang live at the Adolphus Hotel in Downtown.
The station invited their listeners to come down to the Adophus to provide a small audience for our music, which led me to wonder: “What sort of radio listeners are going to come to Downtown in the middle of a normal work day to hear this random choir that they could otherwise hear broadcast live to the comfort of their own cars and homes?”
My answer came in the form of a group of ladies I’ll call Louise, Ellen, and Thelda. That’s not their real names, but there they were, peacocking their way into the Adolphus living room like they owned the place. They are Dallas’ “tea drinking” elite. They are older ladies, in their 50s to 70s, who dressed in their special Christmas sweaters and came down to the Adolphus to enjoy an afternoon of tea and coffee with biscuits and live snooty choral music.
Thelda and Louise got there forty-five mintues early and saved a place for Ellen, who could only make it a half an hour early. They were first to pounce on the free confections and beverages when they were placed out by the Hotel staff, and were sure to negotiate the best seating in between where the choir would be singing and where the radio host would be announcing.
Something was ultra-special about these three ladies. Their sweaters were not just the simple red or green holiday sweaters… No. They were the specialized holiday Doo-dad sweaters. The ones with bells, ornaments, or real beard hair hanging off the front, back or sides. Those sweaters sat there and not only invited Holiday cheer, they demanded it!
I don’t know where these sweaters come from, or how they seem to make it through from year to year. They must go into some kind of absolute zero storage in order to hold their life from year to year.
Perhaps most of us had our first interaction with the Holiday doo-dad sweater when we were in elementary school. To be a fun teacher, teachers have to look fun. They sport button covers, pins, and other lovely adornments throughout the year, but at Christmastime they break out the dreaded doo-dad sweaters. The children think they are wonderful and entertaining. (…I loved it when Mrs. Wheeler jingled all the way down the hall…) I now understand that they are simply using these acutramon to keep sharp weapons close at hand, shrouded in a display of holiday cheer, to defend themselves against the germ-ridden, snot nosed students. They also probably received the sweaters as gifts, and are wearing them only because their Aunt Selma gave them the ugly thing.
In any case, Louise, Ellen, and Thelda had a wonderful time at the concert, drank their tea, ate their sweet biscuits, and hobnobbed with the other WRR Classical Listeners.
I will never forget you wonderful ladies.
I had promised a run down of my recent Disneyland vacation, so I thought I had better get it done before it was totally wiped from the slate of my memory (which we all know doesn’t take much).
Walt Disney was a visionary and a genius. And also an evil sorcerer.
When you leave the public streets and enter Disneyland, you go to an alternate reality. Disneyland is more than the park and rides. Disneyland is the parking, the tram, the ticket booth, and the turnstile to get in. It’s the smell of roasting chestnuts on Mainstreet Disney. It’s the street sweepers, the wandering characters, and even the lines you wait in. Every experience from start to finish is awash with the “disney magic.”
Disney Magic is simply attention to the finest details and the sparing of no expense. It’s a new (sometimes unexpected) discovery around every corner. When you walk through the turnstile at Disneyland, instead of hearing a clunk clunk, you hear a magical wand sound. When they scan your ticket, instead of hearing a grocery store beep, you hear a magical whoosh. This noise must get annoying to the ticket takers, but they don’t seem to let it phase them.
To understand what I mean by the attention to detail, just look down anywhere you are in the park. Even the concrete has been systematically planned and artistically executed. The stamped patterns, textures, and even reflectiveness of it is cohesive with whatever section of the park you are actually in. The illusion is all encompassing. It’s felt from the texture under your feet to the smell under your nose, to the touch and feel of the walls, rails, and barricades.
… And you find yourself unable to keep from smiling and enjoying.
Now, making a leap deeper, I have to go back to my literary theory classes (Thanks Professor Jones!) to make my argument why Walt was also an evil sorcerer.
Jean Baudrillard, a french philosopher, wrote a theory called Simulacra and Simulations which alleges that the original human experience has been replaced by only a simulation (an illusion) of what we perceive the human experience to be like. Wikipedia says it a little better:
Baudrillard claims that modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the human experience is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself.
Baudrillard theorized there were 4 levels of simulacra that are possible. I will illustrate using a popular Disney ride, the Mark Twain riverboat:
So by the middle of day 2 I started to ask myself, where have they fallen on Baudrillard’s scale of simulacra? I think they are somewhere between #3 and #4. For children who have limited world view and experience, they are certainly #4.
This led me to wonder, what is the morality and implications of Disneyland? Is it right and responsible to create such an all-encompassing world view and expect (successfully) for the masses to buy into it (literally with their wallets)? Do they do us a disservice by leading us to believe in their plastic, idealized, pre-packaged world view? Are they generations down the path to simluation #4, where our children’s children will believe that the big matterhorn is only 7 stories tall?
On the other hand, do they do a service by creating a simplified “it’s a small world” escape for people to temporarily suspend their outside problems? After all, people haven’t forgotten that they also have lives and jobs and outside concerns.
I think I agree with some of the philosophers that the “hyperreal” is taking over our human reality. In an era of digital images, and the ease of distorting and changing them, we actually are creating alternate realities, and realities that don’t even exist. (I look happy in this picture, I look skinny in this picture, etc) We become more wrapped up in the perception of ourselves and our reality that we lose track of the actual reality itself.
Where I disagree is that I think there is a core in each human, call it a soul or spirit, that will always bring that person back to the essence of who they are. That even while in simulation #3, in Disneyland, I still can look inside me and find the same hopes, fears, likes, dislikes, and problems that existed before.
Hmm… sorry to get all crazy there. It’s fun sometimes to dabble in that theoretical crap.
But, the real joy of Disneyland is the excitement and energy of the kids who you are with, or people who are seeing it all for the first time. All theories aside, it keeps them happy and entertained, and gives them an experience unlike anything else they have ever seen before. One they will remember (but hopefully not substitute for reality) for a long time.
A WhiteEyebrows first! Here I am blogging from the friendly skies… kind of. I am writing this blog as I am traveling back toward the Great State of Texas, but even though they have figured out how to accept credit cards on a plane, they still haven’t figured out how get us the internet up here (hello!?!?). To add insult to injury we have one of those militant flight attendants who takes every opportunity to talk on the intercom…“At this time ALL electronic devices must be turned off.. anything with headphones or a screen… ANYTHING WITH AN ON OFF BUTTON has to be turned off. Laptops can’t be in the seat pocket, they have to be under the seat or in an overhead compartment.”
I mean, come on. How much latitude do these people think they have in making up the rules as they go along?
And really… if the aviation industry really thinks that my iPod is going to somehow interfere with the navigation systems of this plane. That’s just pathetic.
As if that wasn’t enough, we were warned of “clear sky turbulence.” I fly several times a year, but I have never heard of such a thing… oh well. I guess we can just let her feel like she knows it all.
My vacation was absolutely wonderful, thanks for asking. Late November is a great time to visit Southern California. I spent the first two days at Disneyland with my mom, sister, brother-in-law and four nieces. It was truly the happiest place on earth. My full Disneyland experience will have to be talked about in a separate blog, but to sum it up, I have never seen four girls so excited (and four adults so tired) in my life. We had an absolutely incredible, magical time.
Returning to my uncle’s house was no treat. The morning after day 2 in Disneyland was not pretty. Upset stomach lead to vomiting which lead to headache, bodyache, and soreness. When I finally broke down and took something to try to start feeling better, my mother and aunt gave me a drug which I had never heard of before, but which I took. Then I looked it up online. It wasn’t headache medicine, it was for menstrual cramps. Furthermore it had been taken off of the market in 2005 because of evidence that it might lead to coronary problems.
Great. At least I had solved my non-existent menstrual cramping and taken another ding to my already doomed cardiovascular system.
All this nastiness lead to missing one of my most favorite-est shopping days of the year: the Wednesday BEFORE thanksgiving. Forget “black Friday.” Ask anyone in the grocery business what their worst day of the year is, and it’s gotta be “black Wednesday,” the day when everyone gets the groceries for their thanksgiving feast. So I missed my black Wednesday shopping appointment with my uncle.
I overcame all this adversity in time for Thursday’s fantastic Thanksgiving meal, with complete trimmings: turkey, stuffing, hand mashed potatoes, spinach salad, homemade rolls, etc.
Then my dear uncle infected me with his head cold. So for the last 3 days of my vacation, I have been chugging the Nyquil and lounging about.
All in all, it was a great vacation. All my family (except a brother who had to stay and divvy out the Turkeys to the St. Georgians) was there. We enjoyed many card games, movies, laughs, trips out and about, and personal one-on-one therapy. We solved the world’s (and our own family’s) problems one at a time, and enjoyed every moment of it.
I just glanced away from my computer for a minute as we traveled over the Colorado River and Arizona desert. As I look out over this beautiful blue tinted horizon on this amazingly clear day with the sun setting behind me, I can’t help but feel grateful. I have an amazing life which knows little want. I have an incredibly supportive family who has my back at every turn. I have a job I feel excited and passionate about. I enjoy great health and am generally happy and positive about life and the future.
Even if there is such a thing as “clear sky turbulence” every once in a while, there’s no reason why I can’t buckle up and enjoy the view. Here at 33,000 feet you will rarely be disappointed.
Happy Pre-Thanksgiving everyone!
Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday. Ever since I returned from my mission, it has surpassed Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year.
I love Thanksgiving because our family always gets together in some way. We enjoy each other’s company, sharing our failures and our successes. We eat great food that we all help to prepare. We watch movies together, play card games, and often go to bed with side aches from excessive laughter. It often involves extended family, but has also been just our immediate family as well.
Christmas seems to just get even more awkward as you get older. All the gifts you want are too expensive to justify, and socks and underwear are just boring gifts… so there’s a big draw up and expectation to a bunch of stuff you really might be able to live without.
There’s another reason I put Thanksgiving above Christmas, though. Christmas has turned into a holiday that is just as much about receiving as it is about giving. We all give gifts, but we all expect and hope to receive gifts as well. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is the holiday where we all give, and yet no one receives. We all give thanks to each other and to God.
Thanksgiving gives us an opportunity to recall blessings. To enjoy and remember how wonderful life is in spite of our problems. It is a time to understand and place in perspective that which we value above all else.
So here’s hoping you have a safe, wonderful, reflective, joyous Thanksgiving.
PS > I may try to post while on vacation for the next week, but don’t count on it.
What a day! In some ways, this is the last day of the rest of the year. The calendar is quickly filling up and soon it will be new year’s. I hope to keep consistently blogging M-Th every week (at least), and hopefully the vacations, parties, hot wassail, and chocolate comas won’t keep me from doing so.
(Side Note: I always feel good when a month has 31 days. It makes me feel like I got the very most out of the month I possibly could. Those months with 30 (and the one with 28) really just under perform.)
Halloween is a great holiday. We theatre people often say that it’s the day when the rest of the world can see how fun it is to dress up and be someone else for a while. (welcome to our job :)) For the past two years, however, I have not really fully participated in this Halloween thing. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t really have any kids to get excited with, or if all the planned parties have been lame, or what. I haven’t decorated anything, dressed up as anything, or really done much. Someone hurry up and figure out why that is, ok?
Also, today marks an anniversary. Today is the first day my THIRD year here in Dallas. That’s right, on October 30, 2005 I rolled into Dallas, with a short gig in mind, not realizing or even dreaming that I might still be here 2 years later. All in all, though, I’m still very happy and grateful for the blessing of being here. I have a pretty great life, and even though I miss being in close proximity to my family and old friends, Texas is actually starting to feel like home.
ARRG!! Happy National Talk Like A Pirate Day to ye land lubbers! Make sure ye be participatin’ by goin’ to these websites:
Unofficial home page: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html
Learn to talk like a pirate: http://www.yarr.org.uk/talk/
Oh yes.. and also, happy 32nd wedding anniversary to my awesome parents! September 19th is like the coolest day ever!
Spencer W. Kimball said the important word in the English language is the verb remember.
On today’s sixth anniversary of the tragic events of 9-11-01, take a moment to remember the lives that were lost; lives of the innocent victims and of the heroic rescue workers.
The twentieth century was one of the bloodiest and war-filled in human history, and the twenty-first century is, so far, looking like a continuation of it. Let’s remember what the real war is about: ideology. There are people in the world who hate others for no other reason than the color of their skin or the brand of their religion. This is inexcusable for the level of ‘civilization’ and sophistication we claim to have established in this modern era.
Let’s recommit ourselves to fighting the ideology of hatred and repression that led to the tragic events of that day, and honor the memory of the lives that have been lost in this epic struggle.
May we never forget.