Too Many Alberts

Too Many Alberts

From Einstein's brain popped the theory
of general relativity.

From Fat Albert's “Hey hey hey!” a line
of import, pop-culturally.

Mr. Schweitzer wrote “Reverence for Life,”
and built in Gabon a hospital.

While A.M. Johnson sold insurance and built
a castle in a place quite hostile.

All these Alberts, I don't mind
Be they noble or odd in their way.

I just wish that my dear brother Albert
would up and just go away.

NOTE: Yes, I do have a brother Albert. No, I don't wish he'd go away. He's a great guy and someone I look up to very much. I just wrote down the phrase "Too Many Alberts" and for some reason decided to build a poem around it.

Flotsam: Tweedlee Dee

Just a song I like, and for the life of me couldn't remember what it was called. Now I know.

If you ever wonder why I post some of the things I post here, it's because in part I'm using this blog as a memory box, where I can put little reminder of the flotsam and jetsam that flies around, uncategorized, in my brain, for later filing in more proper order, or at least I hope so.

This version here is a bit closer to the one used in John Huges' film "Uncle Buck," but I'm not convinced it's the one.

Same artist, I note. But I don't think it's the same version.

This one, however, is the one:

Fossilized Fud Music: That '30s Sound

I guess I have to blame my mother for this.

She was born in 1936, so this music is a bit older than she. It is the stuff she grew up with (well, not necessarily the first one, but the rest).

Back then, it was radio. Yes, they had vinyl, but not everyone had a record player. So you had a radio. I know we're tired of radio today, but back then I imagine it was a magical place, with more than music -- lots of drama and comedy shows. I listen to a lot of them.

There's that '30s sound. Lots of brasses. Clarinets and piccolos, from the winds. And lots of swoopy, drippy violins, as in the Rudy Vallee tune.

Then there's that jazz sound, epitomized by Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher."

#amwriting Fragment, "Slouching Toward Bensonville"

NOTE: Here's a little peek inside a writer's mind. Or at least this writer's mind. Which will be kind of like looking into an empty room. It's a fragment of writing I haven't yet worked into yet another novel I'm working on, this one centered on a big box retailer bent on world domination. Yeah, it's real original. But it's been a fun one. Maybe it's even going to be good. See what you think from this bit.

“Y'all want connections,” he said, putting his hand lightly on her shoulder. “Y'all are gonna get 'em. From us.” He turned quickly and walked out of the room. At the door he paused, turned around, looked at her. “Uh-huh,” he said. He left the room and closed the door.

She sat there in silence.

“Show her the first connection,” he said, disembodied, loudly, through a speaker in the room. She jumped.

A projector whirred and a rainbow light shone out of the wall behind her. An image slowly coalesced on the wall in front of her.

She squinted.

The image's blur faded further.

She gasped.

Tinny, martial music started. The frozen image lurched into movement. Happy shoppers pushed their carts through a cavernous Bil-Stor. Beaming mothers. Well-behaved children. Not a mullet or fatty in sight.

The camera zoomed in on a cashier, smiling, clad in a green vest peppered with buttons and curled ribbons. A name tag.

“No!” she shouted.

The cashier, smiling, toting up the purchases from a heaping cart, patting a toddler on the head, was her.

The commercial stopped, frozen on her smiling, leering face.

She sat in the chair. She leaped up.

“You can't do this,” she screamed. “I won't let you!”

The voice chuckled from the speaker. “Your vest is on the hook just outside the door.

The projector turned off, leaving her in darkness. She sat on the chair, sobbing, cursing. As her ejed adjusted to the darkness, she saw a band of light, streaming in underneath the door the man had used to leave the room.

I won't put on the vest, she said to herself.

She calmed her sobbing. Breathed deeply. The dark made her nervous, but she could handle it.

“We'll turn the light off in the outer room in three minutes,” the voice said. She heard footsteps, the opening and closing of another door.

She sat in her chair.

They can't make me, she said.

She stared at the band of light under the door, waiting for it to go out.

Oh So Smart, or Oh So Pleasant

Saw Jimmy Stewart in "Harvey" for the first time a few weeks ago, and fell in love with the film. I've always been a Jimmy Stewart fan, but this film particularly hit me. Elwood Doud is such an everyman -- not necessarily the brightest guy, nor the flashiest. But he listens. He gets to know people. He sincerely enjoys people. And because he's so open and loving and innocent, everyone confides in him.

Still, I wonder if that line from the film fits my book. I've been quoting scriptures and such. Now "Harvey." I've been trying to avoid references to American culture. Now "Harvey." I think I'm going to stick with it:

My mother said you can be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. I spent the greater part of my life being smart. I recommend pleasant. And you can quote me.

This is the fun, the experimentation in writing. Stick with what works.

Palisades Creek, Brought to You By Uncharted

Gushing water. Spring water with newts in it. Dick deMott inside a collapsed tent, wandering around the campground. Those are my memories of Palisades Creek as a lucky new boy scout. This summer, we re-discovered the trail and its natural wonders. Read about it at Uncharted. Go now.

Breaktime: Night on Bald Pate

Knowledge of Knowledges, for Pity's Sake

Having read Peter Drucker’s 1993 book “Post-Capitalist Society” over the past few weeks, I have to say this is the most important “take-away” I discovered:

[W]hat we do need -- and what will define the educated person in the knowledge society -- is the ability to understand the various knowledges. What is each one about? What is it trying to do? What are its central concerns and theories? What major new insights has it produced? What are its important areas of ignorance, its problems, its challenges?

Without such understanding, the knowledges themselves will become sterile, will indeed cease to be "knowledges." They will become intellectually arrogant and unproductive. For the major new insights in every one of the specialized knowledges arise out of another, separate specialty, out of another one of the knowledges.

Thankfully, Drucker speaks of this “knowledge of other knowledges” concept not only in the context of economics and business management, but also in the realms of education and politics.

This lack of knowledge of other knowledges is what is crippling this country. Not arguments over whether Obama is right and Bush is the devil incarnate. Or vice versa. Unfortunately, we’re practicing what a commenter posted on a Time.com story about this weekend’s Glenn Beck rally in response to criticisms from the left on the intelligence of Beck, other rally speakers, and rally attendees:

I guess it’s ok to be stupid if it’s the right kind of stupid.

That kind of thinking, that kind of discourse, is going to get us nowhere. And it applies to the right as well as to the left, as well as to those who, like me, sag in the middle.

Want to understand why people attended Beck’s rally, why they like Sarah Palin, why they worry about religion being left out of our society? Get to know them personally. Not through the crap filters of the media, or the crap filters of your own moronic biases. Actually get to know them. Put aside preconceived notions and actually shut your damn mouth and listen to them. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Don’t react. Just listen. And think. You might learn something.

Want to understand why people are aghast at climate change deniers, why they like Barack Obama, why they worry about religion encroaching too much on society. I’ll repeat: Get to know them personally. Not through the crap filters of the media, or the crap filters of your own moronic biases. Actually get to know them. Put aside preconceived notions and actually shut your damn mouth and listen to them. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Don’t react. Just listen. And think. You might learn something.

Get off the I guess it’s ok to be stupid if it’s the right kind of stupid bandwagon. Right now.

I’m just sick of the smug from both sides of the spectrum.

I’m just sick of the lack of curiosity about what the other guy thinks and why he thinks that way. This applies to the left as well as the right. The left like to paint themselves as the right’s intellectual superiors. But the left is just as full of derp as is the right, because there are just as many on the left unwilling to understand the way their opposites think as there are similar thinkers on the right.

So it's Not Really Official After All

So the waiting game goes on.

From what I understand, if I had a class at BYU-Idaho to teach, I’d know it by now. Since I don’t know it, then I have to assume that the section they set aside for me did not fill up.

I’m kind of bummed out. I was actually looking forward to teaching. Now, there’s the possibility that I’ll be asked later, but it does seem a shame to go through a month of training only to end up not doing what I was trained to do. This is part of my drive to always be learning something, and now I just get to sit around and wait.

No matter. I’ll continue reading the text for the class and see what I can learn about my own learning and writing styles and methods in order to improve. And if, in the future, I am invited to teach and actually have students, I’ll be better prepared. I just don’t want to become what Peter Drucker describes as a person “well-rounded in mediocrity.” I want to excel at something. I’m trying to do that with my writing, and I see teaching as a way to help me do that – as well as paving the way for possible future educational pursuits, including a doctorate in technical communication, which would require a move to Logan and a commitment to teaching.

But I can still do things here. I can be a better father, especially while Michelle is on her continuing education path as she works toward her own masters degree. I will remain patient and try not to get frustrated. Too much.

Meadow Lake in Video. No Dramamine Provided.

This is what happens when you hand a video camera over to a ten-year-old:

I apologize, of course, if you get ill while watching this. He was really, really excited to be in charge of the camera, but not really sure how to make it focus and, at times it appears, not really sure what he should be pointing at. But at least he was having fun.

And this is what happens when you give a video camera to a six-year-old:

And to show I'm equal opportunity in exposing everyone's weaknesses here, this is what happens when you hand a video camera over to a 38-year-old.

Thanks for the riveting commentary. About dirt, no less.