BOYS

Do you have a plan? 

·        High school graduation rates for boys is 50.1%, 56.4% for girls.

·        Boys are twice as apt to repeat a grade as a girl.

·        Boys are twice as likely to be suspended from school as a girl.

·        Boys are three more times as likely to be expelled as a girl.

·        By 8^th grade only 20-25% of boys are proficient in reading. 

·        One in three children lives in a home with no father.

·        Forty percent of children in the US are born out of wedlock.

·        There is now as much as a two year gap in maturity between thirteen year old boys and thirteen year old girls.

·        Boys spend more time playing video games.

·        Boys spend more time watching pornography.

·        Boys who get hooked on pornography and gaming stop having healthy relationships or playing real games.

·        Boys without role models assume from culture than men are violent and have sex indiscriminately.

·        Schools teach to girls and most often treat boys as if they are missing the standard.

·        Rough and tumble play is discouraged as violent, even when no one is hurt.

·        Boys have higher suicide rates.

·        Boys are more likely to be administered drugs for ADHD.

It may, or may not, be intentional, but America is waging war on boys.  This will not change when the federal government intervenes.  It is not the States responsibility to teach boys to be men.  This will only change when fathers are back in the home AND modeling manly behavior. 

Notice that I didn’t just say the father was present.  It is not sufficient to just be there.  You’d better have a plan.

We started our when I invited my two sons to a meeting of a Rectangular Table.  We would have liked to make it a Round Table with knights and swords and such, but it was too expensive.  So we settled for a round tent called a yurt high in the Idaho Mountains.  We went and spent three days together discussing how we could be an influence in our son’s and grandson’s lives. 

The specifics of our plans would not be pertinent to other individuals because every father, son, and grandfather have different talents and personalities.  But we have continued with annual campouts with the boys, many with great adventures.  Most of these would never be approved, or tolerated, by schools.  But the boys are inordinately proud of their experiences. 

Do you have a plan?

THE CURSE OF ADAM

          Does it seem like the more humans try to free themselves from the biological world, the more they enslave themselves?  The movement to urban cities is supposed to be the epitome of civilization.  The country folk are still disdained as simpletons and hicks. 

          A friend of mine drew my attention to this quote.  “. . . the Europeans are post-Christian in this sense, too: they have tried to “liberate” themselves from the curse of Adam by substituting borrowing for working, and from the curse of Eve by not having children. It was entirely foreseeable that neither of these efforts would end well.”

          I believe this trend began after the Second World War, which is now about sixty years ago.  I wonder how long they will have to wander in the wilderness before their children can build the promised land. 

CHURCH AND STATE

If a government has the power to interfere in a religion for a secular cause, the same government will have the power to enforce a particular way of worship on you when you don’t wish to worship at all.  That is why every person, secularist, liberal, conservative, Muslim, Christian, fundamentalist, or atheist must be concerned about the Obama’s ruling mandating certain practices in the Catholic Church.  You may not care about this issue.  BUT THE DAY WILL COME WHEN THE ISSUE WILL CONCERN YOU!

COMMUNITY OR COMMUNISM

Let me tell you a story. 

Recently, my daughter and her family moved into a new home.  Her husband had knee surgery just prior to the move and they had not been able to unpack and settle in as they would have liked.  My daughter is also an accomplished musician and music teacher.  Because of the move she had been unable to set up her studio.

The family went out for the evening, and when they returned they found her studio not only unpacked, but the room repainted and beautifully decorated with curtains and artwork.  You can see pictures of the finished project on her blog at http://sunshine-sentiments.blogspot.com/

Scroll down to the Dec. 16, 2011 entry. 

This project was done by her friends in the community. 

The word community has been trivialized in recent years.  There are no rules about such things, so it is perfectly alright that those who speak the English language change the meanings of words.  But on the other hand, words are the way we think, and when words are unclear, meaning is unclear. 

At one time, commune meant to talk together with some intensity, perhaps implying some intimacy, and face to face.  This, of course, required a physical presence, or a community.  But now we speak of communities as groups that share similar interests or connections, whether they are in physical proximity or not.  These connections may be ephemeral such as the internet, or theoretical such as in the co-ownership of goods.

However, it is difficult for me to imagine my internet community redecorating my studio.  They simply aren’t there to be of any real help at all.  It may be even more difficult to think of the city council, county commissioners, state legislature, or federal government coming into my home and making it more attractive and functional, right at the time I need it. 

I think this story demonstrates the shallowness of technological community, and more importantly illustrates the difference between community and communism. 

WHAT SHOULD I PRODUCE?

After a lifetime of teaching biology, I am fixated on producing something real. I hope I have contributed something my student’s lives, but in the end it is never clear.

That is part of the reason I have gone into beekeeping. I build my own hives. I plan my own operations and business. I harvest my own honey and beeswax. I bottle it and sell it and give it as gifts. But the bees are resting now. We put them to bed a couple of weeks ago. We reduced the entrances, insulated the tops, provided extra pollen and some sugar to help them through the coldest months, and now we wait.

Music is a little like teaching. It is an ephemeral thing. Modern man is used to thinking of music as a CD, or a tape, or of an electronic object embedded in an i-pod. But music originally was something that was enjoyed for the moment and was then gone. Repeat performances were seldom the same. Transient musicians moved along. Old Bill pulled out the fiddle for the dance.

I have spent a lot of my life making music. I’ve played guitar, mandolin, banjo, and harmonica. I suppose I have contributed something to peoples’ lives with my music, but in the end it is never clear.

This winter I am going to make the things that make the music. I started with kits for building a cardboard dulcimer. I built several with my grand children. Then I built a wooden dulcimer modeled after the cardboard ones. It certainly isn’t a traditional dulcimer. And it is small to fit a child’s hands. But the volume and tone are impressive. I am currently building another similar to the one pictured, but with more of a triangular shape. Another Grand daughter and I have started on a wooden teardrop shaped dulcimer.

I am determined to be productive.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

“Of this I am quite sure, if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.”
Winston Churchill

Whenever humans are confronted with misbehavior we try to redirect attention away from ourselves. W often blame someone, or something else. “So-and-so hit me first”, or, “The dog ate my homework.” If this does not work we direct attention to another time. “I have anger management problems because I was abused as a child.” “I was upset because the washing machine broke this morning.”

There is always a reason why something happens. It might even be a perfectly legitimate reason. However, it still never changes the fact that the event has happened, and it does not tell us what we are to do now.

There once was a man who needed a job. He finally obtained an interview for a job for which he was ideally qualified. On the way to the interview he was struck by a car and badly injured. He didn’t awaken from his coma for three days. Desperately he called the potential employer and explained why he had missed the interview. The man was sympathetic, but explained that when the applicant hadn’t shown up for the interview they had given the job to someone else. The man had a legitimate excuse for missing the interview, but he was still unemployed.

So how did it come to this? Financial collapse, riots, intrusive government, eroding freedoms, war, ecological catastrophes, threatened food supplies, incivility, unemployment, violence, fear, failing schools, and ignorance are enveloping the world. What is obvious is that the present is not what America has been. The predictable future, if present trends continue, is not one in which free men would wish to live. We can quarrel over when it began or who started it, but in so doing we will lose the future.

What is needed now, and for the future, is a plan for what we are going to do with the situation in which we find ourselves.

STRAIGHT TIME

Sometime in the 1700’s, people began to conceive of time as linear. This is unlike earlier times when time was always considered circular. At other times, time has been perceived as random, or even irregular. Most of the time they say that time is uniform, but there are times when time seems faster or slower. The last time I wrote about time it was for New Years, 2011 when I wrote about biological time. But here it is, New Years for 2012 and time to write another column about time. I guess you could say it was about time.

Contrary to what many believe I am not old enough to recall ancient primitive conditions. Based on what little I have read about early human practices they must have often veiwed time as chaotic, events following events like a whirly-gig. The passage of time brought about unpredictable and dangerous changes, often resulting in dissolution and death. Elaborate rituals developed to appease the spirits in rocks, rivers, trees or animals.

However, for much of recorded history humans have measured time in cycles. As soon as natural cycles, such as diurnal rotation of our planet and lunar months, were recognized, time was measured and perceived as cyclical. Cyclical time allowed greater organization of society and control over the elements. Humans learned to perform certain deeds, such as planting or hunting, at the right times. Cyclical time also introduced a moral dimension. Things could be said to have been done at the wrong or right time. In addition, each generation could begin to compare its behavior to that of its ancestors.

The idea of time as a linear experience, with a distinct beginning leading on to a unique ending, is nearly universal in modern thought. Yet it has not always held strong infleunce on mankind. The concept was recognized by ancient Greeks who hoped that reason would improve mankind’s lot. The Romans had a concept of leading on to a glorious destiny. However, it was the rise of the great monotheistic religions that suggested that mankind might be about something more than fate.

For the common man linear time had little meaning for much of history. It was in the sixteenth century that the invention of science, combined with the Reformation, begin to spread through Europe, leading people to begin speculating about the origins, and the end, of the earth. Later, during the Enlightenment eighteenth century philosophers developed similar progressive ideas involving a secular ‘heavenly city on the hill”.

The idea of linear time assumes that mankind is on a trajectory of progress. Men disagree about when it began and how long it might take. The overall assumption, however, is that we are on a straight line of progress to better things. This thought so pervades modern America that it has shaped our entire culture.

Under cyclical time people valued patience, relatedness of parts, ritual, relationships, nature, and the healing power of time. Modern culture values haste, practicality, concentration, efficiency, analysis, power and control of nature.

If the future can be extrapolated as a straight line, then the past ceases to have relevance. If one does not see any possibility of deviation from the trajectory in the future, they will not consider any deviations in the past as significant. In fact, the past is assumed to have led to this moment when we are just lucky enough to be in existence and the exact apogee of human existence.

I am not sure if time is linear or not. But one thing does worry me. Straight lines do not necessarily lead upward. They can just as easily be downward slopping, something linear progressives often overlook. It ought to give pause that all measures of time that we use are based on repetitive measurements, whether that be the vibration of an atom, the rotation of the earth, the lunar cycles, or the seasons in a year. Maybe that should be enough to give us pause. It’s about time.