I felt it was time to talk about either my dog Joe or baseball, and Joe is just lying there, not even watching the game.  Baseball it is.  I love baseball, so apologies to those readers who don’t.

Here are some facts.  There are one hundred and sixty-two regular season games in a major league baseball season. The Royals have appeared in the last two World Series.  They won the last one.  That requires playing and winning in a lot of those one hundred sixty-two games, winning a wild card game if necessary, winning a division playoff and winning a league championship.  And all of that results in the opportunity to play in the World Series against a team that may be just as good or better.  Sure, there’s luck involved.  But there’s skill required, and tenacity.  I think character has a lot to do with it.

What is “character” in a baseball team?  Right at this moment, halfway through the baseball season, the Royals have generally not been playing well and they’re six games out from the division-leading Cleveland Indians.  Cleveland lost tonight, and I’m enjoying that, but you usually don’t get to the World Series by hoping that other teams lose. If things turn around, and they reach the post-season, “character” is what everyone will be saying the Royals have. It would be great if we all recognized that getting to the World Series three years in a row is so much more difficult than most of us realize. It would be even better if we could recognize “character” when it’s transpiring, rather than after it happens.  Character is what a team needs when it’s halfway through the season and six games out. Keep your eyes open.  If this team has character, this is when it shows itself.

Saint Mary and I watch the Royals almost every night.  I would include Joe the Dog, but he usually enjoys watching us while we watch the Royals, probably because I go into physical contortions and scream at the television.  Saint Mary pats my knee and tells me to calm down, and Joe The Dog wags his tail.

I have nicknames for a lot of guys on the Royals team, some of which I can tell you, and others I can’t. Kelvin Herrera is “98 Degrees Kelvin,” because that’s all I could come up with.  I call Yordano Ventura “Yolanda,” mostly because I don’t like him. The Royals are one of the best teams in baseball, but they’re the worst at nicknames.  They just add a “y” to everything. “Salvy,” “Escy,” etc.  Those are girl nicknames. Man nicknames have to have power, like “Boxcar” and “Freight Train,” “Lightning” and “NoseDive.”  Everybody in a four-state area knows this and continues to call Mike Moustakas “Moose.”  I mean, really, how hard was that?  I call him Bullwinkle.

Edison Volquez is, by popular acclaim, known as “Steady Eddie.”  That one’s all right, so I use it. When they call out Chien-Ming Wang from the bullpen, I always refer to him as “Pearl Harbor.”  This irritates Saint Mary, who tells me that 1. Wang isn’t Japanese–he’s from Taiwan and 2. it’s offensive. To which I always respond that 1. I’m old and can’t remember his name and 2. Who said I’m referring to any particular nationality and 3. Perhaps I mean that a dastardly sneak attack is walking to the mound and 4. If he’s not Japanese, then how am I offending anyone?  For the rest of the game I strategically retreat and refer to him as “Pearl.”  I like the guy.

I refuse to call Salvador Perez “Salvy.”  I call him ShutTheDoor Perez.  I refer to Cheslor Cuthbert as Chester Drawers, mostly because I think it’s funny, whether anyone else does or not.  I call Eric Hosmer “Hoz,” and so do a lot of other people.  I agree with them on him.  Mary gets angry when I call Whit Merrifield “Little Mary Whitfield.”  That’s mostly because I can’t remember his other name. I do the same thing with Jimmy Chicken Nuggets.  Yes, he has a real name, and no, it’s not Jimmy.  It’ll come to me.

The Royals won tonight and Cleveland lost. We’re six games out at the halfway point.  Tonight we saw Kendrys Morales hit a left-handed home run, then come back and hit another one, this time right-handed.  We saw a tremendous infield save by Escobar in the fourth inning.  We got to watch Danny Duffy complete almost nine innings on the mound, and successfully bunt for a hit, bringing in Chester Drawers for a run.  Danny doesn’t often get to swing the bat, and the grin on his face toward the Royals dugout was worth the whole game.  And oh yeah: we won. Here, hopefully, comes character.

I see the dumbest things on Facebook.

The other day, I read a post by an employee who, for one reason or another, thought it was necessary or somehow wise to tell the world that his boss was stupid, had a bad disposition, was unfair, unjust and otherwise not fit to waste our oxygen. I can save a lot of words and sentences here; this takes the cake for Most Dimwitted Use Of Social Media. Ever.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve had problems with bosses and employers in my life, back in the days before texting and social media.  But this is almost as though someone has said “Hey, this media is fast and cool, but while we’re at it, let’s try to find the worst possible ways to use it.” There seems to be a tendency in our society today, with the advent of social media, to air our grievances publicly. It’s Festivus  for Facebook.

We all have grievances.  We all get angry and frustrated with people in positions of authority.  But it doesn’t make sense, in most situations, to air that frustration publicly.  We used to call that “biting the hand that feeds you.”

Should we ban these ranting morons from Facebook?  Should we take away their computer or their smartphone?  Something tells me that won’t solve the problem. Isn’t it about a change in our thinking?  Why is it now somehow acceptable to broadcast our feelings while we’re upset or angry?  Sure, I’ll buy part of the argument that instant communication lends itself to “immediate gratification,” but even if it does, why have we started thinking it’s all right to do so?  There’s an old saying: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

When I was young, my mother told me to count to ten when I was angry.  Being angry, I  usually counted only to three or four and let fly.  So this was a lesson long in coming to me. Even today, there are about a zillion other people in the world who are better at counting to ten than I am.  Oh, I know how  to count. But sometimes I don’t want  to. It doesn’t mean I don’t try, it doesn’t mean I didn’t listen to my mother and it doesn’t mean I don’t know better.  Even me, the guy with the short fuse who is liable to say anything, reads these “my boss is an idiot” postings and thinks “You’re a bigger idiot than your boss on his worst day.”

Should employers have the right to be aware of how their employees behave in public?  I think so.  Look at the situation without social media in the picture:  employers have always tried to protect their reputation.  As an employer, you hire an individual to assist you in selling your product or service.  If that employee does anything to restrict or curb those sales, he is doing the opposite of what you hired him to do. That’s a breach of contract. If word comes to you through any  channel that a particular employee speaks ill of you or your company, isn’t it all right to sit down with that employee and say “I hired you to help create a good image.  Stop creating a bad one.  I refuse to pay you for that.”

Some may argue that no such clause exists in their contract.  I suggest that if you read it carefully, you’ll find it. But if not, it’s still common sense;  I’m pretty sure most employers don’t make a habit of paying people to insult them.

Some will argue, properly, that there is a right to free speech in this country.  Maybe, today, we are confusing that right with something different: the additional agreement by an employee to help to create a positive image of the person or company who is paying him. This agreement stands above and beyond  free speech.  It is an agreement, made willingly, that says, in essence, “Yes, I know I can say anything I want to say, but I’ve agreed to say good things about my boss. He has agreed to pay me to do that.”  If anyone wants to argue that this is nothing short of prostitution, I would nod my head and say, “But you did  take the money.”

We could argue about whether I’m right or wrong until the sun goes down, and that’s all right.  But for heaven’s sake, if you don’t like your boss, and you feel hell-bent on telling the world how stupid he or she is, do it in this order:  1. Quit.  Leave your job and the paycheck you are receiving.  Only after you have completed step one, should you 2. Tell the world about his or her imbecility.  Better a whore than a hypocrite.

But remember, I am a guy who will say almost anything.  Taking my advice could be unwise. When you decide that you want someone else  to hire you, they may have heard about your scintillating social media outburst.  They may not need the headache.

Maybe the best advice is to leave your employment quietly, on good terms and zip your lip.

Count to ten. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Don’t bite when it’s not feeding you. Stop biting.

 

I watched a television commercial the other day.

Three or four “Real People—Not Actors” were told that they could respond only by using “emojis.”  This is so wrong on so many levels, but I’ve only time to rant and rage about one of them.

Emojis, or “emoticons,” are little pictures for people who 1. Can’t read  2. Can’t write or 3. Think it’s “cute.” They are only another obvious indication that our society continues to “dumb itself down” to its lowest common denominator.  This has been going on far longer than keyboards and cell phones have been with us.  It began decades ago, on our street signs and our elevator buttons and in lots of little ways.  It raises the question: do we require our society to read and write, or do we give them little pictures when they cannot?  Those are two different paths.  One elevates our society and the other demeans it.

I don’t really mind if someone puts a little smile into their communication to me.  But I do get concerned when it appears the little picture begins to overtake the written word.

There’s more to the written language than simply knowing which word to use and how to spell it.  There is the joy of appreciating what a good writer can do when those words are arranged in a way that delights us, or inspires us. No one will ever close a book and say “That author sure knows how to use his smiley faces.”  Or God help us, I hope it never happens. Spelling, grammar and structure are only tools.  A chainsaw is a tool.  I know people who can carve a bear out of a tree trunk using a chainsaw.  And I know people who have cut off their foot with the same tool.  It’s all about knowing how to use the tool.  I don’t want to see a little picture of how the guy feels about bears.  I want to see the bear.   When you know your tools so well that they are an extension of your being, you’re just liable to slip up and inspire someone.

I had a discussion with a young person several years ago about the fact that much of our knowledge is no longer internalized.  I told him, point blank, that the time will come when he won’t know the answer to an important question.  He pulled out his cell phone and said “I’ll have the answer here.”  Sigh.  Maybe he’s right.

I believe that if we don’t use our brains, they’ll become as useless as the tails we probably once had, and they’ll disappear.  I know some people to whom I believe this has already happened.  Will the lack of mental exercise result in earlier onset of dementia for the next generation?  I prefer my madness on a proper schedule, thank you very much.

Maybe I’m old and out of touch.  Maybe most of the world is pleased that our public restrooms have a little picture of a man and a little picture of a woman and we can instantly “identify” as one or the other and use the door we choose.  I am not.  I like to read things.  It gives me a better understanding of my world.  The loss of language is death, and the idea of that loss angers me.  I will not go quietly into that good night.  I will rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

 

 

I don’t know about you, but this transgender bathroom issue has got me as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

I don’t care  what somebody else’s sexual orientation is. In my book, this whole thing falls under their private lives, and their private lives are none of my business, just as mine is none of theirs. It’s not something I want to know about. It’s not something I want to discuss with them. Call me puritanical–and none of you will– but I consider the use of a restroom as one of the most private things we do, and I hate to see it going public. I don’t even like talking about it. That’s the way I was raised, so if that troubles you, I can’t help it.

But since it’s in the news, here we go.

The idea, as I understand it, is to allow people who identify as transgender to use the bathroom with which they identify.  Apparently there would be no qualification for identifying as transgender. One simply identifies.

President Obama is telling our public schools they must do this, and several states have introduced similar bills into their legislatures. I don’t intentionally try to offend folks, but my first thought was that we need something more important to worry about. To me, it’s no more important than legislating stepladders for those of us who identify as short people. If you feel that’s politically incorrect, well, I suppose it is. I like lots of different sorts of people. But I know a stupid idea when I hear one.

I wondered what percentage of the population is transgender. It turns out that nobody knows for sure. A survey by the Massachusetts Department Of Public Health asked respondents if they identified as transgender. The percentage of those answering yes was 0.5 percent. That could be wrong. It could be more, and it could be less.

I speak only for myself, but I’m pretty sure that if I am standing in a public restroom and someone comes in who is female, or who obviously thinks they ought  to be female, I will be pretty uncomfortable. I don’t think I can do what I went in there to do. So for me personally, this is going to result in a lot more time in the restroom, staring at the ceiling. I’m going to guess that if this occurred in the ladies’ restroom, there would be quite a number of uncomfortable females in there as well. And if they are high school or college age females, they’re going to be really  uncomfortable, because if I were a hot-blooded male youth, I’d take advantage of this. I’d march into the principal’s office and tell him I am feeling sort of female and  I feel  I need to use the girls’ shower. Don’t ask why I thought of that. It’s the juvenile in me.

My wife, Saint Mary, was a kindergarten teacher. For many years, she dealt with little tiny people who didn’t want to use the bathroom at all. They wanted to wait until they got home. And aren’t we all that way, to some extent? As we matured, we simply forced ourselves use the public restroom, and got over it. Maybe I’m wrong, but I bet most of us still go in there with a slight tinge of apprehension. Deep down inside, aren’t we all more comfortable using our bathroom at home? Maybe I’ve got that wrong, but if I’m right, transgenders aren’t the only people walking into public restrooms with a degree of anxiety.  Two wrongs won’t make it right.

I will generously assume that whoever came up with this boneheaded idea was concerned with the comfort of individuals who identify as transgender. But if I’ve got it right, and if the Massachusetts Public Health Department has got it right, then it seems to me that it’ll make 0.5 percent of the population comfortable and the other 99.5 percent uncomfortable. They’ll all probably be in there, staring at the ceiling.

I try to be good.  I try to mind my own business.  I pay my taxes.  And now, I feel like I’m going to have to hold it and cross my legs until I get home, and I absolutely know  that I’ll be hurrying, and that’s going to result in a speeding ticket and this is all because Obama and Congress apparently don’t have enough to worry about.

People my age are supposed to have “bucket lists.” I don’t know where that term originated, but it makes me think of a bucket being kicked somewhere and I don’t like the sound of that.

Creating a list of things I want to do before I die is not the way I want to go about list-making. I don’t want to be constantly reminded that I’m getting nearer to the end of the list. What do I tell myself when I’ve checked off the last item? “Well the list is complete. Time to die.” I think I like the idea of working on a list and continually adding things to it. Dying can happen along the way, if it wants to, or whenever it seems appropriate. I don’t want to be involved in that decision.

My list is titled Things To Do While I’m Alive. Admittedly, it’s an odd, even bizarre list. It has come about because there have been times in my life when I learned something and thought “I would like to see that.” So it’s an odd, bizarre and old list.

For example, I have wanted to visit Abraham Lincoln’s grave for decades. This year, Saint Mary and I traveled with a group of friends to Springfield Illinois to see Lincoln’s Presidential Library, museum and gravesite. Standing at Lincoln’s tomb, realizing he is about fifteen feet away gave me an eerie feeling. I’ve spent a lifetime studying Lincoln. The very fact that I was able to visit was fortunate, considering his coffin has been moved or re-interred seventeen times. His son Robert finally got fed up with tomb raiders and re-burials, and encased Lincoln in concrete ten feet below an empty sarcophagus. That was the end of that grave-robbing business.

So Lincoln’s tomb is checked off the list.

Though I’ve never agreed with his policies, I’ve always been fascinated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s story. In particular, I’ve wanted to visit the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he died. A couple of years ago, Mary and I flew to Atlanta and drove to Warm Springs to see what is still referred to as the Little White House. I don’t think the entire house is as big as my garage. It’s hard to imagine a President staying in this little tiny house. I don’t know why FDR liked this place so much. The whole area reminds me of Missouri’s Ozark region. I guess it allowed him to get away from people. There’s also a really cool and interesting Roosevelt museum on the site. We spent several hours there, then came home. I now know why the press always referred to Roosevelt’s Warm Springs home as The Little White House. It’s because that’s what it is. A little white house.

Check the Little White House off the list.

A recurring list item is Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the site of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. They say it’s been pretty well investigated; Over a thousand books have been written about it. It is the most investigated murder case in world history and yet I think they still need me to travel down there and check things out. Lots of times I like to just stand around and look and stare and think. I like to pretend. An older friend of mine who has since passed on, once described visiting the site of Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He said, “If you stand there and be still, you can almost smell the blood. You can see them lyin’ there, all tommyhawked up.” Well, that’s’ what I do. If I stand there and think, I can see it happening. And, since Dealey Plaza is a recurring item on my list, it serves as my fail-safe, insuring that the list will never be empty.

So mark Dealey Plaza off the list—several times.

I’ve had a fascination with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow since I was in high school.  Sometime this year, I’m going to fly to Shreveport Louisiana with a couple of friends, then drive about fifty miles to Gibsland. Nine miles southwest of town on route 154 is the site where six lawmen ambushed Bonnie and Clyde in 1934, pouring hundreds of bullets into their Ford V8 in about 30 seconds. Killed them both. Well it really wasn’t their Ford, since they stole it, but If you’re looking for a good example of overkill, this would be the definitive and literal example of that word.

I’m looking over my List Of Things To Do While Alive, and there seems to be a trend toward famous people getting themselves dead. My fascination with death is ok, as long as it’s somebody else’s.

 

 

“Kitsch” is a new, but actually old word getting a lot of play today. It’s a German word, describing anything that is popular because of its tastelessness or overly sentimental attraction. Something is kitsch or kitschy if it is so old and so bad that it’s cool. I don’t think I’m kitschy. The only person who thinks I’m cool is me, and I’m OK with that.

Old LP music albums might be called kitschy. A lot of young people think they’re cool, just for what they are. They don’t call them “albums” any more. They call them “vinyl.” I’ve tried to find the reason for their appeal. I’ve had conversations with younger people about this. They can’t seem to put their finger on why they like them. The best I can get from them is that they’re just cool.

I’ve listened to music in a lot of formats in my life. When I was a very small child, music was played on 78rpm records that were thick, brittle and would actually shatter if you dropped them. But during most of my youth, we had the now-celebrated vinyl in two forms: the small 45rpm “singles” or “forty-fives,” as we called them then, and the large 33rpm albums. These large albums were the backbone of our music collections. Up until that time, LP albums had been simply a collection of eight or ten songs. But with the release of the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, albums began to develop themes and directions. They became works of art in and of themself. When we heard the iconic Sgt. Pepper’s, we were in a new world and realized that we needed to listen to the whole thing. Most of us had dozens of LP albums. The true aficionados had hundreds. The fanatic collectors stored them flat—horizontal on the shelf, knowing that, if stored vertically, they would warp, and the needle would ride up and down like a GTO on a country road, sometimes flying completely off the record. Most of us played those albums thousands of times, and didn’t do a very good job of keeping them clean and free of scratches. If we’d known how valuable they were going to be in forty years, we wouldn’t have written our names on the album covers. The reproduction of music on those albums was cutting edge at the time, but never quite free of the “hiss, pop and crack” that so many of us grew up with. We were as familiar with the pops and scratches as we were with the music itself–we knew exactly when it would pop or start skipping. Young people today are unfamiliar with a skipping record repeating over and over again (and do they even know that’s where “He sounds like a broken record” comes from?) But they also don’t know that we constantly fiddled with the vertical control knob of the TV to stabilize the picture. Skipping records and rolling TV pictures are two things an entire generation doesn’t want back. The past wasn’t always good, and vinyl wasn’t perfect.

In the late 80s, I bought a CD player and my first digitally-recorded CD album. Within ten seconds of listening, I knew that music had changed forever. The hiss, pop and crack were gone. I was listening to nothing but the clear, unadulterated sound that was intended for my ears. No more scratches. No more warping. No more carefully laying a dime on top of the needle to keep it in the groove. The first playing of this CD would sound identical to the ten thousandth–it wouldn’t wear out. Music had finally arrived in the form God intended.

I don’t know when music ceased to be one of the most important things in my life. Don McLean says it died in Clear Lake, Iowa in 1959.  Maybe it died again in front of New York’s Dakota in 1980. Or again with Glenn Frey’s passing this year. Perhaps it dies of a thousand cuts. I recognize the devotion to music and its icons in young people today and I remember it. Today, music, and my collection of it are a very small yet pleasing part of my life. Secretly, sometimes, when the house is empty, I fire up my component system with my forty-year old Fisher speakers (which, by the way, are still better than anything at Best Buy) and indulge myself with ZZ Top.

I sold all my “vinyl” on E-Bay several years ago. I probably could have made a killing, but I sold them for more than I had paid for them, decades earlier. I had no more emotional attachment to those scratchy LPs than I would have for a vertical control knob from an old TV.

I feel a little sorry for the people who were selling CDs a few years ago. Like Edison’s revolving cylinder and RCA’s dog, that medium suddenly disappeared and they’re left with a lot of shiny Frisbees. The music survives, but not necessarily the medium. I’m OK with that, too.

I’m no closer to understanding today’s fascination with old vinyl LP albums than I ever was. If young people want something kitschy, wait till they see my 8-tracks. They’re welcome to those, too. Kitsch as kitsch can, I always say.

 

 

 

 

 

I ought to get out more and understand what’s going on in the world. I recently read an article by Alec Torres, a contributor to National Review. In the article, Torres describes microaggression, which is part of the trendy new and politically-malevolent phraseology on our college campuses.

Torres interviewed Dr. Derald Sue, who has been studying microaggression at Columbia University since 2007, and has written two books on the subject. Dr. Sue defines a microaggression as an “everyday slight, putdown, indignity, or invalidation unintentionally directed toward a marginalized group.” According to the article, the term was coined in the 1970s by Chester Pierce, an African-American psychiatrist at Harvard. Apparently, it’s making a comeback.

Whenever I start feeling uneasy about something purporting to be a fact, I head for the dictionary. I looked up micro and it says “a very tiny or small thing.” The definition of aggression has a lot of meanings, but in the context of today’s progressive assault on free speech, let’s call it an insult.

The first question that popped into my head was “Why are my tax dollars paying Dr. Sue to study very tiny insults for nine years, and to write two books about them?” Seems like a waste of my money. He should have called me. I could have explained this to him.

According to Dr. Sue, the person delivering the microaggression often does not know he’s doing it. This begs the question; how do we know it’s there?  When Torres asked Dr. Sue to provide an instance of a borderline microaggression, Dr. Sue disagreed with the premise of the question. “…microaggressions represent a clash of…realities, and the question you’re raising is whose reality is the correct reality…”

Now, you just read that answer. Maybe you understood it. I don’t. To me, it sounds like somebody avoiding the question. That usually means somebody is trying to justify the tax money they’ve taken from me. Dr. Sue says we’re having a clash of realities, and the question is who’s got the right reality. That wasn’t the question. The question was “Can you give me an example?”

Torres states the obvious: microaggressions are vague. Finding and proving them are even more difficult. That makes them a convenient weapon– and harder to deny. It’s pretty difficult to prove the Invisible Man isn’t  standing there. So now I’m paying Dr. Sue to study very tiny invisible insults that may not be there. I know a waste of my money when I can’t see one.

I have a message for the young people who are buying this load of crap: “Don’t. Buy. This load of crap. You won’t be able to live your life this way.”

When I was a kid, we said all kinds of things. Some of them weren’t nice. There’s no doubt they were hurtful to others. That’s because when we were children, we spoke as children. Part of growing up and becoming an adult is developing good judgment about what should come out of our mouths. (I can’t believe I’m explaining this, and I can’t believe it’s me explaining it.) Usually, our mothers grabbed us by the ear, pulled us into a corner and explained why we shouldn’t call somebody a name or say hurtful things. Most of us learned it. Some of us never will.

There was an old saying in those days. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I may have committed a microaggression by repeating it, but you’ll never be able to prove it. Now I don’t need a phone call from Dr. Sue to lecture me that, yes, words can be hurtful. You see, the “sticks and stones” thing was to be applied to the recipient of the insult, not the donor. The donor got his ear grabbed and was pulled to the corner. What it really meant was that one, we ought not to say hurtful things to anyone and two, it is a testament to one’s character to rise above hurtful language or comments and ignore them. What happened to this philosophy, and why is it out of style today?

The general thrust of “political correctness” is aptly named; it is political by its very nature and an outright assault upon free speech. When particular words, language, comments or ideas are outlawed or denied, we are, in fact, prohibiting our right to speak our minds, guaranteed us under the First Amendment. We must never do this, even if the other person’s words and ideas are demonstrably wrong, socially repugnant and personally painful. It was so eloquently stated long ago: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

It’s true that free speech goes only so far. You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater. But you can speak quietly and reasonably about a fire while seated in a crowded theater. The trick is to avoid starting a stampede to the exits.  The trick here might be avoiding a stampede from the microagressions. Particularly since we’re not exactly sure what they are, or if we’ve committed one.

The truth is that there are stupid and insensitive people in the world, and there always will be. We cannot legislate them away. We can’t socially engineer them into oblivion. Like the proverbial bad penny, they keep coming back. Most of us recognize a bad penny. My parents taught me to ignore people like this. I don’t know what’s happened in the world since I learned that very valuable lesson. What I do know is that society used  to say “you shouldn’t say that,” and now it has begun to say “you can’t say that.”  And when we change that word, we assassinate our own right to say what we think. And since we’re both thinking right now, let’s think about that.

The truth about these theoretical microaggressions is that anytime, anywhere we meet a human being for the first time, we will cause opinions to be formed. They will be formed for a lot of reasons: the way we look, the way we talk, the way we hold our head, the color of our hair or skin or eyes or clothes, the opinions we hold, the tone of a certain word, and a thousand other things. It might depend on how much sleep the other person got.  It could depend on the weather. And so, young people, there are generations of older and yes, wiser people who have some well-intended advice for you: Try to be kind to everyone. You will fail occasionally, but if you try, you will generally succeed. That’s as good as it gets.

 

 

What was the old saying? “Believe half of what you read and none of what you hear.” It’s attributed to various people, among them Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allen Poe, but fact-checking is apparently out of style these days. Too many people believe anything that floats in front of them. Television, Hollywood and the Internet are the new Holy Trinity. Apparently they speak the gospel and should be accepted on faith. We don’t regard it as odd, even when they disagree among themselves.

I taught my children to be critical thinkers, but I’m afraid they’re outnumbered today. As a society, we’ve become too willing to let others do our thinking, rather than decide for ourselves. A thirty-minute run down the road is vital to our physical health, yet a five-minute workout for that muscle between our ears is too tiresome to imagine.

Critical thinking and a healthy skepticism aren’t difficult. They don’t require a college education. One needs only an ounce of gray matter and a willingness to trust his gut. Why is it too difficult to locate other sources of information today? To me it seems much easier. With a world of information in our hip pocket, how hard can it be, to check a different source when something doesn’t sound or feel right? The sad truth is that it takes more effort than listening to Spotify; it amounts to pressing five or ten additional buttons.

Right now, in the middle of this relentless election cycle, would be a convenient time to test our gut. I say convenient, because you wouldn’t have to work very hard to find a lot of nonsense; it’s everywhere.

For example, current interviews of college-aged people indicate to me that a majority believe college education can and should be free. Did they pass their Math 101 course, or were they watching a video? Doesn’t it stand to reason that if any of us, progressive or conservative, could press a button and make education free—really free—we’d have pressed it long ago?

If something doesn’t seem right, then check it out. That thing they call your gut is a lot smarter than television.

 

 

 

 

 

My granddaughter (and several million other young people) recently shared or re-posted an article on Facebook. Under a photograph of a cranky old man gesturing with his cane is the title 15 Historical Complaints About Young People Ruining Everything.

The article, by Jon Seder, consists of fifteen complaints from various authors in history, including Robert Louis Stevenson. By way of an introduction, Seder states:

“Nothing is certain in this life but death, taxes, and the existence in every generation of fuddy-duddies who carp about things not being what they used to be. This centuries-spanning collection of gripes seems to suggest that the golden era of stability and contentment these geezers long to return to may never have existed in the first place. Still, the sheer similarity of their views ought to console them—some things never change.”

I will enjoy responding to this:

Dear Granddaughter and a million other young people:

I suspect you took all of a minute to read that original post and share it. I suspect your thought process might have been “old people are just cranky and everything will be fine.” I doubt you’ll give four or five hours to considering things, as I have done with this response. But a considered response is worth the effort. I’ll speak for me alone as one of the “carpers.” Other “geezers” may wish to agree.

Yes, I’m old. Yes I tend to carp. It is a fact that I can be downright cranky and argumentative, particularly when you attempt to teach me something without enough experience and knowledge to make me sit up and listen. It is you who should be listening. Look up the word sophomoric and you may understand my cantankerous nature. It is true that I ought to learn to smile and be kind in those situations, because I know that you don’t yet understand the world. But it is also true that no amount of compassion on my part will increase your knowledge and experience. Only time can give you that.

Your article attacks me personally, whether you intended it or not. I spent my entire life—well over fifty years– helping younger people, personally and within volunteer organizations. I don’t expect any thanks, but I’d rather not be disregarded as “just an old crank.”

It’s demonstratively correct and true that older generations have always been concerned with younger generations. But have you asked yourself why this would be so? You can maintain that all of them down through the ages, including me, are “cranks and fuddy-duddies,” but are you not condemning yourself to the same crankism in 50 years? Can you accept the notion that old people down through the centuries, including me, might have been trying to help a younger generation? If you can’t accept it today, I’m pretty sure you’ll accept it on a day in the future. You won’t be able to thank me then, but I forgive you now.

Your re-posted article assumes that that older people are merely complaining about “things not being like they used to be.” If, in the future, you determine that I was right all along, then you will know that this accusation is the unkindest cut of all. And yes, you will know it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every so often, I enjoy letting someone else do the talking here. Today it’s my good friend, Kasey Brown.  Many of you know her as the star of Robidoux Resident Theatre’s Mary Poppins a few weeks ago.  Some of you may not know she’s also a talented and insightful writer.  She’s young and beautiful, yet she’s an “old soul.”  She’s not afraid to say what she thinks, even when it may go against the grain of her own generation.  In short, she “gets it.”  But enough from me; here’s Kasey:

Hello Common Sense readers, this is not DB. This is a 27-year-old female community thespian who lives two doors down from him. I’m also an agricultural journalist, and at many events we cover the prevalent age gap in production agriculture. The average age of farmers is nearing 60, and the role of feeding the world desperately needs young people to fill it. Because of this, we also hear a generalized list characterizing each generation in an effort to understand those around us in the workplace, wherever that may be.

This means that I hear somewhat regularly how awful my generation — the millennial generation — is. Here’s the kicker. In many ways, I agree with them.

A large age range is grouped into the millennial generation — ages 18-34, the younger of which have had technology and the Internet available to them for most of their lives. This one bold statement is why I get frustrated with my own generation.

Social media and technology are creating a generation of narcissists.

The catalyst for this blog post was a discussion that Dick and I had about a young man’s Facebook post spouting a broad political statement. One of the many reasons why I love Dick is that he pushes people to be better. We also share a love of communication, and he was trying to goad the young man into using better debate technique. The young man quickly backed down saying he was just trying to share his opinion (which was not backed by much fact). To this, Dick replied with a brilliant excerpt from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, “To air one’s views gratuitously is to imply that the demand for them is brisk.”

Social media allows people to share their opinions haphazardly. If they are connected only to like-minded people, they never need to debate or bring in facts to support their views. They can receive constant validation for sharing shallow points or seemingly endless selfies. Maybe this validation is why so many people are persistently on their phones during dinner, while at other friends’ houses, or while running errands.

What bothers me is that it makes things too easy. It’s too easy to share unfounded viewpoints and ignore contestation. It’s too easy to multitask and poorly carry on more than one conversation with different people simultaneously, even when one of them is in person. Frankly, it’s too easy to be rude.

Rudeness is not relegated to a single generation. Anyone can be rude. However, this young generation is making it a common occurrence to be rude, especially to others in their same generation, and that is not ok.

There is hope, though. Social media is not all bad. It can be a great tool to share your life with friends and family who live far away, or even to connect more with those nearby. It can also be used to share valid information — like this blog, of course.

For instance, another major topic at many beef industry conferences is the growing lack of understanding between ag producers and consumers. Most consumers are more than three generations removed from the farm now and just don’t know how food gets to their table.

I recently shared an admittedly controversial editorial about why the author doesn’t buy organic produce, and I agreed with his points. I did get some comments that challenged me and what resulted was a thoughtful, civil and engaging discussion on the Internet.

It really did give me hope. Yes, the tools are out there to facilitate a generation of narcissists. I hope my fellow millennials can learn to put down our smartphones every once in a while, so maybe we can stop being characterized so poorly in generation breakdowns. More importantly, I challenge any reader out there, regardless of age, to maintain your manners.