Too much information...or too little?

I think the Luann strip from Sunday, September 28, is appropriate. I assume TMI is text-talk for Too Much Information...? Unfortunately, there isn't too much information when it comes to talking about sex.

The world is a different place and a lot more tolerant than when I grew up in the late '50s and early '60s, and the stigma of unmarried girls getting pregnant has mostly disappeared. That's why a woman with a 17-year-old pregnant daughter can run for Vice President. It could not have happened in the 1960s.

When I was a teenager what sometimes happened to girls who got pregnant was that they suddenly disappeared, with a cover story: "She's gone to live with her aunt in Iowa for a few months." Uh huh. Everyone knew that was code talk. The girl would show up a few months later and that would be that. We all knew she'd had a baby but no one was asking because the most likely scenario was that the baby was adopted before it was born. That was one way of handling it; the other was to have the young man "do the right thing" and marry her, which is what happened to a couple of friends of mine. When I was a teenager we accepted those two ways of handling a teen pregnancy without thinking much of it. Unless we were one of the principals in the drama, that is.



It was in the days before abortion was legal, and even so some young girls had illegal abortions, and nowadays I'm sure there are a lot more who terminate pregnancy that way.

By the time I started working for the school district in the 1970s most of the older social rules had been displaced. Even 30 years ago some girls who got pregnant were opting to keep their babies. We had a program called Young Mothers, now called Young Parents--to make the young fathers more involved--but it's still mainly mothers. Then, as it's always been, a lot of fathers are absent from the girls' and babies' lives. What surprised me was that in 1976 it was housed in two classrooms in an old elementary school. In one classroom were 6th graders, and right next door there was a nursery, then next door to that a classroom for the young moms. Some of the girls carrying babies didn't look much older than the girls in the 6th grade, and I wonder if that caused problems. Over the years the program has been moved several times. It's found a home now, in its own building, but it needs it, because there are always more than enough young pregnant girls, and recent moms, to fill the classrooms and nurseries.

I guess there isn't a solution to any of this unless you were to implant an IUD into a young woman just before puberty and remove it when she gets married. If you think there's a cry about abortion you'd hear an even louder howling should something like that be proposed. People don't like to mess with their reproductive freedoms, but those freedoms sometimes have a high price. Ask Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, whose pregnancy is at as high a price as you can pay.

Teaching children about sex and what can happen is preferable to ignorance and finding out firsthand what can happen. But then, your daughter doesn't have sex, does she? Your young man keeps it in his pants, doesn't he? Sure. Just keep thinking that, but lay in a supply of diapers while you're at it.

Sex 101

My dad's "birds and bees" talk with me was pretty terse: "Girls are different than boys, and sometimes the other boys will make fun of that, but it's not funny."

Poor Dad. He was so embarrassed he turned and left the room, and that was the end of my sex education from my father.* Mom was more subtle: She left a book in my underwear drawer. The Adequate Male was mostly a list of do's and don'ts for marital sex, since according to that book there wasn't any other kind. The other sex education lecture I got from Mom was when I was 18, after my girlfriend's dad called her and said he thought Cathy and I were engaged in some hanky-panky. "Some things are for marriage only!" she said in her loudest voice, and believe me, her loudest voice registered on the Richter Scale.

We had a Health Ed class in high school. Our teacher was Bob Walker, a name that always made me laugh because Bob Walker was exactly what he looked like. A basketball player, he was at least 6'4" tall, and slightly stooped over, and when he walked his head went up and down, bobbing as he walked. Perfect. Mr. Bob Walker, as all Health Ed teachers, walked--or bobbed--a thin line when it came to sex. It was one thing to talk about brushing teeth, washing your face or any other personal hygiene--he was good at describing how to avoid athlete's foot--but when it came to sex he got into dangerous territory. I'm surprised that 45 years later we are still having a debate over this. Teachers walk the same thin line now as they did then, even though sex is discussed openly everywhere else but in public schools.

Bob Walker used a lot of negatives: "Don't stay out past midnight with a girl because no one ever did anything proper after midnight." "Don't go out with rough girls." We all loved the rough girls lecture. I pictured girls with sandpaper skin.

When it came time for the nitty-gritty of sex, though, Bob Walker couldn't tell us anything. No nuts** and bolts. Just the driest of dry talk about male equipment vs. female equipment, complete with charts and diagrams. One day he was talking about boys and girls in cars necking and petting.

I raised my hand. "I'm sorry, and maybe everyone in the room will laugh at me because I don't know this, but what exactly is 'petting'? I've heard the word but don't know what it means."

Bob Walker's face blushed from the point of his chin to his blond crewcut. I noticed all of the guys in the room suddenly became silent and all eyes were on Bob Walker. Apparently I wasn't the only one in the room who didn't know the definition of 'petting'. I was just the one who admitted it. Bob Walker stammered, "It's uh...uh...when you're kissing, and touching, and...uh...fondling each other's sex organs." Aha. Now we were getting somewhere. There was a voice from the back of the room: "Sounds good to me!"

Bob Walker had crossed over the line into that dangerous territory, and quickly stepped back. I had learned a new word that day, but I already knew instinctively what petting was. We called it making out. The trick was, by either definition, how to find a girl with whom to practice making out...or petting. This is why it's my personal feeling that sex ed in public schools should be as liberal as possible, teaching the use of pickup lines, for instance, or the best places to park. None of us--except for a lucky few--had ever been in a position where we got to practice petting or making out. We found out the mechanics of a baby's conception and birth, but not how to prevent it. We were burning to know, "Can a girl get pregnant the first time?" and "Can Coca-Cola administered to the vagina after drive-in movie sex kill the sperm?"

Instead of abstinence only sex education--which got Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, pregnant--we should have sex education on how to prevent pregnancy by using oral sex. Or we could teach guys how to go for the gusto, where the clitoris is, how to make a woman have an orgasm. Now that's sex ed! Fat chance in this country, though. Like 45 years ago and Mr. Bob Walker stammering out the definition of petting, we are a nation of embarrassed and clueless adults wanting our children to know about sex without having to talk about it. We just want to tell them not to do it, when in too many cases it's all they want. I don't know about you, but if someone puts an apple in front of me...a ripe, juicy apple, yum...and says, "You can't eat that apple, not even a bite, not even a nibble," then the first thing I want when that person leaves the room is to bite into that apple.

*I'm admitting right here I wasn't much better with my own son. I don't remember having a conversation about sex with him at all.

**Ha-ha, I said nuts. Well, I thought it was funny.

It's over! We won! Victory in Iraq Day!

I read the news today, oboy!

Sarah Palin told Katie Couric yesterday that we've achieved VICTORY IN IRAQ!

I can't wait for the celebrations to begin, for the troops to come marching home to their tickertape parades. For the thanks of a grateful nation. From all of us, GREAT JOB, GUYS AND GALS OF THE ARMED FORCES!

I am so happy that there won't be any more killings, bombings or suicides, that our young people can come home and immediately get their GI benefits, go to school, get back to their families and loved ones, become the productive citizens they should.

I am also happy for Sarah Palin for pointing it out to me, because frankly, I guess I've just been too busy to watch the news. BUT NOW I KNOW, WE WON!

Hallelujah.

Most of what you know is wrong

Dang. Paranoia Strikes Deep has been wounded but not killed by the news that the bikini-clad, gun-toting picture of Sarah Palin we showed a few days ago is a fake.


Dang again. A fake. Imagine. But then, in a world of Photoshop and political trickery why would I believe the picture in the first place? For one thing the bikini model who loaned her body to be put under Palin's head just looks too good. She's got nice legs, no signs of varicose veins or other problems women having had several children might have. Of course, Palin could have gotten surgery to fix any damage, a tummy tuck, etc., but did she? Nobody has said. For now, I'm just going to have to file Sarah Palin's bikini pic in the fakes file.

I, paranoiac that I am, find it unusual that I swallowed this picture, when I don't believe in the simplest things on the Internet. The 'net is a huge collection of the world's crap and spews it out in a volume difficult to swallow. Still, I wanted to believe, and that's what duped me.

I also want to believe that all of these people who are excusing Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, for her teen pregnancy, would be the ones who would excuse some poor immigrant mother or 17-year-old black teenager who got pregnant. Right? Naw. The sentiment runs in the other direction when the mom-to-be isn't one of the chosen few. The "elite" as the candidates like to accuse each other of being.

I also think that Bristol's boyfriend, Levi, the high school Romeo, the stud who couldn't keep his dick out of the governor's daughter or wear a rubber when he was in there, has the world's attention. Most guys who knock up a girl and admit it end up marrying her, doing the right thing, and the families cluck their tongues and say, "Well, as long as they're married..." but there are always the types who need to be reminded, shotgun wedding style, what's expected of them. Levi had a mighty big shotgun at his back. The governor of his state, the candidate for President, the whole freakin' Republican Party were all armed, cocked and loaded: YOU ARE GOING TO MARRY BRISTOL, LEVI. You will take both barrels if you refuse. This is about the most serious discharge of semen since Bill Clinton spuzzed on Monica's dress.

John McCain was being held as prisoner of war in '72, but someone recently might have told him, "You can't drop Palin after nominating her. Tom Eagleton was George McGovern's veep candidate in '72 and then the press found out he was in a psychiatric hospital for depression at one point in his life." Out he went, and along with that the election. Well, that's over-simplifying it; Nixon and Company's dirty tricks had a lot to do with it, but you can be sure they were dancing in the aisles when Eagleton got dumped. So would the Democrats if Palin was dumped. Barack and Michelle would definitely have some celebratory fist-bumping going on then.

Oh, you pretty things...

I'd like to thank my son, David, for the picture of the girls in the catsuits, and my friend, Dave Miller, for the picture from the recent Solano Street fair near his home in Albany, California.

You just have to click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Both of these guys know what I like to look at, so thanks, guys.

Yesterday I was talking to one of the young secretaries. Jana is in her early twenties, very tall, probably 5'9" or 5'10" in her flip-flops. She has the figure of a supermodel, and I wonder why she's in a tiny office at a high school instead of walking a runway.

Jana is a very friendly person, and has a winning personality, not something you'd expect from a young, pretty woman like her. Usually it's all about them, isn't it? The sun rises and sets on them? Maybe that's my clue to why she's in an office and not on the cover of Vogue. She doesn't have the super ego to go with the supermodel figure. Anyway, as I was talking with Jana she looked up from her desk and leveled a look at me. This is the look successful people give that says, "I'm interested in what you're saying." We all love getting that look; it makes us feel special. So I went into some sort of story based on my experience with the organization and soon I had her laughing. Oh, wow. First of all I had her interested in what I was saying, then I had her laughing at my stories! I was in heaven. But I had to move along and keep going: lots more stops to make and secretaries to thrill.

I'm old enough to be Jana's grandfather. She was laughing just like she'd laugh at her grandpa's reminiscences. The world I'd been talking about, the world of maybe 25 years ago, wasn't in Jana's consciousness. I was talking about something she thought probably took place in the "olden days." When I got that through my thick male skull I put our conversation in perspective. But it didn't stop me from admiring her youth and beauty.

The best way I can describe how I force myself to feel is that youth and beauty are like pretty scenery. You want to stop and look, but you know there'll be more the next day...and the next. As long as I live I'll never stop looking at the scenery.

Saying a lot by saying nothing

I had a discussion yesterday with an elementary school principal on communication. My point is that teaching is more successful when done in person rather than online, because of the nature of proximity. It also has to do with all important non-verbal communication.

Different cultures have different signals they send out with their body language, but a shrug of indifference or a delighted smile is the same in any language. You can tell how your message is received by another even when they don't open their mouth. Husbands and wives, especially long-time marrieds like Sally and me, have a kind of visual shorthand instantly read by the other.I'm sure many a teacher is disheartened when what she is teaching is met by kids slumping in their seats or staring out the window. If the kids are bright-eyed and leaning forward, hot dog! She's scored with them. They don't need to give her an oral critique; she already knows.

Non-verbal is impossible to do via e-mail. A lot of e-mails I've seen have been obviously written in such haste that rules of grammar are ignored, spelling is bad, or thoughts are unclear. We don't have the opportunity to slow the writer down, to ask him to clear up some things.

Where I see this lately is in the political arena. We're getting a lot of Sarah Palin, but not a lot from Sarah Palin. Just more political buzz and trash-talk. I want to slow down the love fest and ask her what she really thinks, where she really stands, what she'd really do. Republicans and indies right now are ga-ga over Sarah, and the polls show she's bumped up the ticket. As I write this over 11 points on the USA Today poll. Still, what will happen once she's sent on the campaign trail and begins to speak? We'll have to see how people respond to her, both critics and fans.

What they see now in the non-verbal area they definitely must like. Hey, even I'd go see her if she showed up at a rally like this!

Well, she could leave the gun at home. And speaking of non-verbal communication, the gun says a lot, doesn't it? She has a big phallic-looking thing like that in her hands and a goofy grin on her face. You know she's telling you something.

The message the guy in the background is giving will thrill the tobacco companies. Hey, she's around a smoker! She must not disapprove of cigarettes!

Even Picasso got the blues

Saturday Sally and I used our membership to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to see From Monet To Picasso, a show on display from the Cleveland Museum of Art.

What I can say is you folks in Cleveland rock, as the TV-show themesong said. You've got excellent taste in art.

I've seen a lot of shows in a lot of museums, and this one was right up there with the best of them. It started with the realistic paintings of the 19th Century, then went into Impressionism, Picasso's blue period, cubism, German expressionism, right up to Salvador Dali and surrealism. Whew. That's a lot of isms!

Sally had decided to buy a membership because there are always things to see at UMFA, and had we just bought tickets for this show they would have been only $20 less than a membership for a year, where we can see any shows for free. When we got to the museum just after it opened the line to get in was already snake-danced out to the street. We showed our membership cards and got taken right in. Not having to stand in line has to be worth something.

What I found in this show is what I found at a showing of John Singer Sargent's paintings a couple of years ago in Portland, Oregon, that to stand in the presence of great art makes my body become light, even as the images pile up in my brain. To be close to Life, Picasso's blue period tribute to his friend who died a suicide for love, or to be able to stand inches away from Van Gogh's Poplars at St. Remy, looking at his brush strokes, gives me feelings of well-being and satisfaction.

There were several rooms for the exhibitions and in each room stood a guard, watching the crowd. They allowed visitors to get close to the paintings, just don't touch. But I got to breathe on them and I wonder if that sort of thing doesn't affect them, too. To have several thousand people over a period of years exhaling garlic, onions and other assorted breathy particles on Modigliani or Mondrian would have to do something. Luckily most were in frames behind glass, which gave at least that layer of protection from us of the great unwashed masses straining to get close enough to see.

UMFA isn't the only art museum that I'm impressed by. An hour's drive south of Salt Lake City, in the small town of Springville, we have a wonderful museum with great art. Sally and I try to get there at least once every couple of years. I should really go every year because they have a Spring Salon with original art from local artists. It's always a great show because whoever the judges are, they have a great eye for art. But the permanent collections are terrific, also. I'm especially happy about the collection of Russian art of the past century. It's pretty strange when you think of it, but here you have a 1930's building in the middle of an All-American town like Springville, Utah--and doesn't that name sound All-American?--with a major collection of Russian art.


Unfortunately, I don't have the artists' names, but here are a couple of the paintings, and you can view some more at their website, Springville Museum of Art.

Bum's rush

Occasionally I do a Google or Yahoo search for an old boss of mine. When I say old, I presume I may be looking for an obituary, because when I worked for him in '72 and '73 he was close to 50 or even in his mid-fifties. He had an unusual last name, and in my searches I find other people with the name, but not him. It's not too surprising, really. He was a crook and would want to lie low, not get in the public record. If that was his goal, then at least for the purposes of the mighty Internet search engines, he succeeded.

After my Labor Day rant on bosses (see the posting right below this one), I got to thinking about people I've worked for who have been the most difficult. Lou was definitely the worst. I worked for him in '72 and '73, as an artist for a franchising firm. It was my idea to present a product that people wanted to buy, and Lou had the same idea, only he never planned to back it up with anything. He wanted the money and after that the customers could just go to hell.

I was hired by a young woman who I worked for until she fell in love with the general manager. They took off; left their respective spouses and moved out, leaving a note. I was put in charge of the department, which was my first clue I wasn't meant for management, not meant to be a supervisor.

Lou was a person with an extremely hot head. His Mount St. Helens-style blowups were terrible. When he erupted you wanted to get out of the way of the molten lava, but when he blew up on you it was impossible. That happened to me a couple of times.

Lou's most famous line, repeated endlessly by all of us, was, "I don't care how you do it, just get it done." With no real directions it caused a lot of the employees--including me--to flail away in futility, unable to complete the tasks, which incurred more of Lou's wrath.

Lou was a sexual harasser. No woman in the office was safe. He may have been in his fifties, but he liked girls young. His long-suffering girlfriend, Doris, who usually worked out of her home, set up an office near Lou's because of that particular aspect of his personality. One day Margie, a young secretary and new mom, walked by Lou. He reached out and cupped one of her breasts. "Those tits got big after you had your baby!" She threw the paperwork she was carrying on the floor, then walked out the door. Lou went into his office and started to drink. We heard later he wailed to Doris, "She's younger than my own daughter!"

Believe it or not, Margie came back, but he never assaulted her again. That wasn't true of Liz, a woman I hired for the art department, who was as I found out, had fragile health and even more fragile psychology. Lou picked right up on her weaknesses and it was no time before he was having an affair with her. She started having seizures during the day while sitting at her desk, and she had to quit, which made Lou happy. He'd gotten what he wanted.

After awhile I had enough, but at that point in my life I was young and stupid about the procedure. I went into a major spiral of depression and rather than talk about it or get any help, I just put my resignation on his desk and walked out. That was a BIG MISTAKE. A BIGGER MISTAKE came the next week on payday. I went to the office to collect my check. When I walked in and saw the accountant I asked him for my check, and just then Lou walked up behind me. "WELL! LOOK WHO'S HERE!" he said. In my totally naive way I said, "Oh, hi, Lou."

I think I thought at that point he'd say, "Oh, please come back! Please, pleasepleaseplease..." I didn't want to go back, but that wasn't what Lou had in mind for me. What he did was grab me by my collar and my belt and start marching me to the door. Lou had been a boxer during his Navy career in WWII. He was still strong and could handle himself and others physically. "NOBODY WALKS OUT ON ME! NOBODY!" Still with his grip on me we went past the secretaries in the front office, who looked at the scene with shock. Lou literally pushed me out of the front door onto the sidewalk and yelled, "WE'LL MAIL YOU YOUR GODDAM CHECK. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND NEVER COME BACK."

So much for begging me to come back!

I went home and went to bed, and I spent most of the summer of 1973 in bed, in a depression so profound I'm still unable to remember most of it. I worked my way out of it, and twenty years later I went on medication to control depression, but long before that I learned a few valuable lessons about avoiding the same pitfall: get another job before quitting the old one. Give proper notice of intent to resign. Keep out of the boss's line of sight. Simple stuff, but I learned the hard way.

It took years before I actually told the incident to anyone. The girls in the office saw it, but I didn't tell my wife until decades later. It was easily the most embarrassing and humiliating thing that ever happened to me, and I walked right into it. Lou was a real jerk, but that time it was my fault: I was the stupid guy who brought it out in him.

Happy Labor Day!

When I was hired by the school district 32 years ago I was told by a fellow employee, "Better join the union. Big Jim's our boss. You'll need the protection."

That turned out to be good advice, although I never needed to use the union services against Jim. Other employees had their problems with Jim's unique interpretations of policy and rules governing employees, and each time the union made sure he understood. Big Jim got grieved a lot and he always lost. But, what usually happens in a big organization? It didn't matter that Jim was a jerk--it might have helped him with his bosses--he got promoted, and was in on the hiring of his clone/replacement, Phil, who also has a problem understanding rules clear to everyone but him. It has to do with his personal paranoia and sometimes near-delusional behavior. He's also been taken to the woodshed by the union over several situations, and made sure he understood where he went wrong. Did it do any good? Naw. Those types never seem to learn that their management techniques, a cross between the Industrial Revolution and Marine boot camp, are out of fashion in today's world. Every once in a while you've just gotta yank down their pants and give them a switch across the butt to let them know they screwed up.

Our union is part of a state employees' organization, and specifically for school district employees who are non-teaching, although it is also part of the NEA, the national teachers' union. I think it makes it easier on us for our bosses to know we are backed by one of the most powerful unions in the country. In Utah where I live, a right-to-work state, employers really, really hate unions. That's good. I'm glad they hate unions. I wouldn't be a union member if they loved them.

When I started the head of our union was a man who was so contentious that when yearly salary and benefit negotiations would start some of the district administrators would opt out, saying that their hatred of the guy was so deep they couldn't effectively bargain. After a while the contentious man was gone. He got into politics for a time, then a newspaper article appeared where a 17-year-old boy claimed that the man asked him to have sex with his wife while he watched. Even that story, which cost him his political career, didn't end his union activities. Now he's the head of a large police union. He may be a sex pervert, but by god he knows union law.

One of the presidents of our local chapter was the head mechanic, overseeing the maintenance and repairs of our district vehicles. One year it was found that the district always was one step ahead in negotiations and it turned out our president was feeding them information. He was a judas! He didn't like what the union board was doing, so he decided to sabotage the negotiations. He was booted out of the union, but a couple of years later he committed a major mistake. He caused about $6000 damage in a truck accident that was his fault. He drove into the school bus washing facility in a truck too big, damaging both the truck and the bus wash. Believe it or not, he came to the union for help and they backed him! They did it because the district was going to administer major punishment and they felt establishing a precedent was more important than their feelings toward the guy. The union pointed out that the bus wash had no sign that indicated how high the vehicle had to be, so even though he had caused the DOY (Damage Of the Year), Judas got off with a slap. It showed me at the time that it was always the district's reaction to want to punish, and it was the union's reaction to point out where in the long run it was the district's own fault. I like that. Always turn it around and make it someone else's fault!

We also had some problems a few years ago that required a job action. To see school district employees standing on the sidewalk outside the district office waving signs was too good an opportunity for the news media, so we made all the local news shows and the newspapers. The district caved in within 24 hours.

It's no surprise to anyone who knows me that I think most bosses walk on their knuckles, were dropped on their heads while infants, or have some kind of major undiagnosed personality disorder. Mine also fit into the definition of the Peter Principle, which is that a person is promoted to the level of their own incompetence. We have bosses who hate each other, won't talk, view all employees and each other with suspicion and fear, and operate out of paranoia and fear for their own jobs. They don't have a union and we do.

On this labor day I'd like to salute those unions that keep those kinds of dickheads in line. I've never had to use the protection of my union because it's always been over me, like an umbrella. When someone else screwed up--and god knows a lot of people are screwing up every day--the union jumps in and usually wins.

Right now one of my coworkers is our union rep, another coworker is retired from the Postal Service, and was a union guy there. He is a blowhard and braggart, and says he handled hundreds of grievances at the Postal Service and won every one of them. I think that's an exaggeration. He also is working because his wife won't let him stay at home. He complains about that all the time. I said, "Why don't you file a grievance against her?" He just gave me a dirty look.

Hope you had a great and restful Labor Day!

How idiots of the Invisible Empire helped Barack Obama

I watched Barack Obama give his historic acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last week. It put me in mind of some things that have been stirring around in my brain: Obama will make a fine international spokesman and symbol of America for the rest of the world. Most of the world is non-Caucasian, non-European. He looks more like a citizen of the world than just the U.S. He is also extremely articulate and bright. Did you see him stumble and fumble, tripping over his own tongue like our current White House occupant? No he didn't, because he has a clear gift for communication.

I thought about the long road that people of color have had to travel to put him in this position. It was over 40 years ago that images from the civil rights movement were being played out on nightly television news shows. At that time I don't think anyone ever considered that a Barack Obama would be running for president. Seriously running, not just in the race without a real hope of getting the nomination: Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton.

Recently I watched a History Channel feature, The Secret History of the Ku Klux Klan, from its founding in 1866 by Nathan Bedford Forrest to the current small, radical hate group it has become, as well as the other groups of haters it has spawned. At one point the Ku Klux Klan was a powerful force to be reckoned with, now it's a bunch of guys most rational people think are nuts.

In the 1960s, at the time of the Civil Rights Movement, there were no black people sitting in positions of national power, so the original civil rights bills were all signed by whites. But that was right and it was legal. In its own way the Ku Klux Klan caused the civil rights bills to be passed because they are idiots, murderous idiots. They thought that by killing civil rights workers, by bombing out a church where civil rights strategies were plotted, by killing Medgar Evers or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that the civil rights movement would go away, but they in fact made it stronger.

They didn't reckon on mass communication of the 1960s. When people around the world, including the United States, saw footage of the lunchroom sit-ins of the early 1960s they saw young black people in suits kneeling on the floor while leering, screaming white creeps poured garbage on them. Score one for the oppressed. When people around the world and in the U.S. saw footage of Alabama police using water hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators they were shocked. I know I was. What did the people do to deserve such treatment? Well, they bucked the established order, established for the benefit of white people.

When we heard stories about civil rights workers being lured to their deaths in Mississippi it only strengthened the cause they were fighting for. The peabrains who planned and executed the murders were KKK members. What they hoped to accomplish is moot, because what they actually accomplished was the opposite.

It's too bad that people had to die. Martyrs are powerful symbols, and unfortunately these people had to suffer being murdered in order to achieve that status. Had Dr. Martin Luther King not been killed in Memphis over 40 years ago, do you think he would have the same impact alive as he does now, four decades after his death? His assassin was trying to squelch his influence by killing him, and yet increased it tenfold, a hundred or thousandfold, by pulling the trigger.

Barack Obama is standing at the head of a line cast by history, backed by great people who had courage and fortitude. Some went to their deaths because they were doing the right thing.

I read recently that the younger generation doesn't think the same black-white terms that we, as their parents and grandparents, were taught to think. Black people are on TV every day, whereas they weren't much seen on TV when I grew up. Younger white people don't see a whole lot of difference in people of different races because they are more familiar with them. Television and mass communication, in a turn away from their exclusion policies of the past, have made it possible. When Barack Obama gave his speech on August 28, he was seen by people all over the world, not just in the U.S. With that familiarity comes trust.

Or, conversely, mistrust. The goons of the KKK and like-minded white supremacist-types, in spirit and in body, are still lurking around. Whether they belong to a group or are just hating on their own, they're out there and we have to be vigilant. History has taught us that when a person as important as Obama comes along he brings along a trail not only of supporters and admirers, but people with murder in mind. At this point in civil rights history the martyrs have been made and let's have no more of them. It's time for a Barack Obama to step out of the shadows of those men, that turmoil, those times, and be the leader he was meant to be.

First day of school

I don't know a teacher who wouldn't like to say this to a parent, just once.

Today is the first day of school in our school district, all 100 schools, 65,000 kids, all with butterflies in their stomachs, or like me, with cramps in their guts. Jeez, adding it all up, my years as a student and my years working for the school district I'm up around 45 years of the first day school experience. You'd think I'd be more used to it by now.

In our town today the thermometer is about 95 degrees or more. Most of our schools aren't air conditioned; only the year-round schools have it. So our kids in the older, traditional buildings will be sweltering in their new clothes and new shoes.

That reminds me. I didn't get my back-to-school shopping done this year. Wow, how can I stand it wearing last year's shoes? Oh, the shame.

I'll be interested to see how my old junior high school does on its first day. The school burned down three years ago, and has been rebuilt. Well, maybe that's optimistic. It's been under construction, and the past two months the construction has gone on night and day, seven days a week. I'm sure the neighbors are about goofy from the sound of construction equipment. When I visited the school last week to help set up their internal mail delivery, I noticed construction guys everywhere. The contractor said he lost half his work days last winter with the bad weather, and they have been trying to make it up, but a building this size goes up in its own time. You can't hurry love and you can't hurry construction. We don't want it falling down on the kids, now do we?

The school has been double-bunking with another junior high for three years. There are students who are going on to high school this year who spent their whole time as a student of this school under the roof of another. They will never know either the old building or this new one. They are kind of the falling-between-the-cracks kids. Displaced persons, refugees. In July, 2005 a fire started in a computer, and the principal tried to put it out but the fire quickly got out of control. I went home only to watch the TV news and see live helicopter shots of my old school in flames. Not only did I attend the school nearly fifty years ago, I've been its school district mail person for 32 years. To say I have some sort of emotional investment in that school is an understatement.

I'm glad to see it re-opening, bigger and better than before. In all of my years as a student and as an employee--in all 102 years of the school district where I work, as a matter of fact--it's the only time a kid's dream came true, and the school burned down. The principal and staff have worked hard under extreme pressure. When I think back on my career after I retire I'll remember this man and his staff and remember what they did. He didn't get paid a dime extra, but I'll bet his working hours doubled over the past three years. It's that sort of dedication, that sort of professionalism, in the face of district and public politics and lost construction days, that make me respect these folks so much.

I usually don't name people in this blog because I don't want them googling their names and coming up with this blog, since I do it under a pseudonym. What I want to say to Principal Doug B., vice-principal Dr. Shauna M, and custodian Jay D., as well as the rest of the staff and teachers, good luck to you today and this alumnus will be wishing you good luck on your new school re-opening.

Boogie Olympics

I haven't watched much of the Olympics. Sorry, I just think they have become so bloated, so self-important, that they have taken the fun out for me. I see sports that aren't really sports. It's nice to watch Amazon babes in bikinis whacking a volleyball on the beach, but as an Olympic sport...? C'mon. It's not a sport, it's an activity, quoting sports curmudgeon Jim Rome. (Jim was actually referring to bowling, but to me there isn't a whole lot of difference.)

I think the Olympic games should go for a few days, not weeks, have less pomp and circumstance and more pure athletics. No basketball, no baseball, no water polo, no beach volleyball, synchronized swimming or synchronized diving. I'd like to see marathon running, track and field, swimming and gymnastics.

But if you've just got to have those non-sport sports, how about boogie dancing as an Olympic competition? I think these kids would take gold. Maybe just silver, but they are awfully good. It can't be any harder to score dancing than it is to score ice dancing in the Winter Olympics or floor exercises in the Olympics gymnastics events.

They don't get sand between their toes, either.

May you stay forever young

As I type this, Sally is flying home from Pennsylvania after spending a week with our son, his wife and their kids.

I know how she's feeling right now; it's difficult to leave them. But we'll both be there in October.

Whenever I see their beautiful little faces I think of Bob Dylan's song:

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

The me that isn't me

Here's my security badge from work. Do you know me? Do you know my double? There's been another sighting recently of my "twin".

If you recall, I have mentioned in the past that several people have reported to me over the years that they have approached a person they thought was me, only to find out it was someone "who looks exactly like you." One lady went up to a man in a restaurant and was so sure it was me she was convinced "I" was trying to fool her.

The most recent incident involved my work leadman, Gary, who reported to the Scott M. Matheson Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City recently for jury duty, then later told me he saw a fellow juror he thought was me. "Same hair, same beard."

Are they just looking at the strictly external things, my white beard, my hair? Do they notice my overall build, my height, the clothes I usually wear? Because from the time we're babies we learn pattern recognition. Our mother's face is imprinted, and that extends to those around us. Some people say they can tell it's me if they hear my voice. If someone I know as well as Gary, who I have worked with for 27 years, can't tell it isn't me, then how much does this double of mine look like me? ...or sound like me, for that matter?

Another man asked me a couple of months ago, "Is that you on the Auto Zone poster? I could swear it's you."

I never see this person or persons they think is me...I never see the printed material they say I'm on. I haven't seen the Auto Zone poster. My brother said years ago he attended the play Fiddler On The Roof and thought at first it was me playing Tevye!

As I tell these people who report these elusive Postino sightings: "If the guy looks exactly like me, and he's doing something wrong, then it isn't me." That will cover the bases; then I can go out and do any old damn thing and when people confront me I can say, "Must've been that person who looks exactly like me."

A trivial mind at work

My friend Eddie from the Chicken Fat blog ran a very funny picture from the 1950s. It's by Mad Magazine artist Will Elder, and a veritable Who's Who of Who Was Who in the mid-1950s.

I think I'm pretty good at Trivial Pursuit, since I can remember the most trivial stuff and yet forget the important things...but there are a couple of folks even I can't identify in this drawing. Still, for the ones I can, I've put numbers. You go through and see how many you know. I'll tell you who they are if you don't know, but go ahead...I'll wait for you to finish.

You click on the pictures to make them full-size.


Hmmm, dummm-de-dah-dah...oh, hello. Back so soon? Couldn't get 'em all, could you? OK, in the words of Bing Crosby, "Junior, I'll elucidate."

1. Lone Ranger and Silver. Silver is so smart he can sit in a theater chair!

2. Prince Albert in a can, as in the old joke: A kid calls a store and says, "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?" "Yes, we do." "Well, then, let him out!"

3. Santa Claus. You knew that one, didn't you? And you're being good this year, aren't you?

4. 5. 6. Rice Krispies' own Snap, Crackle, Pop.

7. 8. The Smith Brothers of cough drop fame. Here the joke is they're sucking on their competitor's drops.

9. Donald Duck as the drop-down duck from You Bet Your Life, the quiz show starring Groucho. The duck would drop down with the secret word. If the contestant said the word he got a hundred dollars. In this case the word is Lollabridgida, as in Gina, the sexy Italian star.

10. 11. Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin. At that time the most famous comedy team in the country, with their movies being number one box office.

12. Julius LaRosa. See #24.

13. Groucho Marx. See #9.

14. Milton Berle. "Uncle Miltie." The first cross-dresser to become a big star. Also known for stealing jokes from other comedians, and for making really cornball jokes. He called them "lappy," as in, "You have to lay the joke in the audience's lap."

15. Ralph Edwards, host of This Is Your Life. The folks who were brought up on stage and had their lives recounted were supposedly not told ahead of time. I never believed you could get a celebrity in the audience of that show and fool him. I'm sure there was chicanery afoot with this program and anyone who believed the celebrity was actually surprised, well...do you know the word gullible?

16. General Douglas MacArthur. Famous during World War II, "I shall return," was fired by then-President Harry Truman, #25, during the Korean War.

17. The Quaker from Quaker Oats.

18. Edward R. Murrow, host of See It Now. His on-screen smoking was his trademark, along with his famous radio voice.

19. Sir Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of England.

20. Roy Cohn, counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, #27. Cohn, who set himself up as a moral paragon, succumbed to AIDS in the 1980s, and became a character in the play, Angels in America.

21. Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday from the TV show, Dragnet.

22. Aunt Jemima. That makes two characters well-known in my household in the 1950s. My father worked for Quaker Oats as a salesman; Aunt Jemima was a product made by the Quaker Oats Company.

23. Jackie Gleason. Along with Sid Caesar, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Groucho, probably the most recognizable comedian in the country. Here he's seen as his pathetic character, The Poor Soul.

24. Arthur Godfrey. He was host of several television programs during the early 1950s, very popular host, although without any discernible talent of his own except for stroking a ukelele. He was often seen with radio headphones. The joke here refers to #12, Julie LaRosa, who Godfrey fired on the air. It was very controversial at the time, but I remember Godfrey kept his popularity and LaRosa spun into obscurity.

25. President Harry S. Truman, who played the piano, looking at a musical piece with the most famous television pianist of the day, Liberace, #26.

27. Senator Joseph McCarthy. One of the most notorious figures of the early 1950s, whose presence on the House Un-American Activities Committee, his questioning and his famous charge of "Communists in the State Department," for which the numbers changed every time he mentioned it, kept him in the public eye. He was eventually brought down, but not before having his name become a synonym for accusation and innuendo.

28. Abraham Lincoln.

29. Bing Crosby, checking his dollar bill to see if it is indeed the same person as the one sitting next to him. The joke, carried out by comedian Bob Hope, #31, in many forms, was that Crosby was filthy rich. Which, of course, he was.

30. Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

31. Bob Hope, see #29.

32. Dr. Fredric Wertham, M.D. This is an inside joke by artist Will Elder. Wertham was a critic of horror and crime comic books, then popular. He wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent which brought about an industry Comics Code, lampooned on the back cover of the horror comic he's reading. Mad was published by William M. Gaines, whose popular horror comic book line, including Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Haunt of Fear, were targets of Wertham's.

33. Marilyn. What else need I say?

The unidentifables in the picture would be the person drawing stars on General MacArthur's arm, and the person sitting to the left of Jackie Gleason.

Separation anxiety

It took longer than normal, but I finally figured out what the joke is with this comic strip from yesterday.

Little Audrey

I was looking through a biography recently and noticed this picture of a mother and baby I figure is from about 1930-31.

The baby in the old picture looks a lot like our baby, my granddaughter Gabriela, called Gabby. She's seen here with her dad.

And with her mom.

The little girl in the 1930s picture grew up to be this famous movie star.

So what I'm wondering is, will our Gabby grow up to look like Audrey Hepburn?

My wife Sally, Gabby's grandma, is flying to Pennsylvania tomorrow for a visit. I miss our girls very much, both Gabby and her older sister, Bella. I also miss their mom and dad. I'm set to fly there in October, but for now I have to depend on pictures.

Here's a little something from my son's blog about Gabby and her current fascination with the color green.

That finger's not the only thing that points up

Another public figure brought down by sex. John Edwards is just the latest in an interminably long line of men who get caught in adultery.

The general public has heard this old story so many times about so many different guys. The media gasbags pick up rocks and in a biblical sense, stone the perpetrator. Some they kill (figuratively speaking). Some you can’t kill if you roll boulders on them. For all of the millions of words written and said about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Bill came back from a political death. And the media dropped a mountain on him.

My personal feeling is that while everyone might gasp, point fingers and act outraged about guys getting caught with pants down, so many men have done what these guys have done that the outrage is usually more for show than true moral indignation. In Edwards' case his wife's terminal cancer will negate any understanding he might otherwise get. We all know some women are attracted to powerful men, and since guys are at their true core just out to get laid, it isn't hard to convince even normally smart males to forget common sense, do the nasty, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

John Edwards had to know going in (no pun intended) that there was a strong risk he'd be found out. The worst part is when originally exposed he cried foul, blamed political dirty tricks, and used the tactic of outright denial. After an interval Edwards told ABC News that the affair had indeed taken place. It happened, just like he said it didn't. Doesn't do much for Edwards' credibility, does it?

When it comes to sex, a guy's moral compass swings around and points in several directions. Politicians, religious leaders, presidents of the U.S…so many have done the dirty deed. It’s easy to sin in haste and repent at leisure, but a guy in a public position should haul himself up, take a breath, be smart enough to weigh the risks. If he's a politician the media and his political enemies are looking for this sort of thing. John Edwards has a place in recent history, but his affair will override his history of political campaigns. Once again a guy’s penis was where it shouldn’t have been. It happens so often I'm almost more surprised that it's news than the fact it happened, or who it happened to.

Real monsters

This probably comes under the heading of things I'd be better off not knowing.

The little horror creature on top, scanned from the latest issue of Discover magazine, is e-coli, the little devil that makes people sick, even kills 'em, when food is contaminated. Honest to god, it looks like it comes from Hollywood special effects, but it's a real monster, folks. And while small, we should all fear this killer.


These other little critters are dust mites, who live their lives in our beds, munching on the dead skin cells we're constantly shedding. I have known about these little beasties, but try not to think about them when crawling into the rack for a night's z's. The idea that thousands of things are living off our leavings is unnerving to say the least. Good things these things are so small they can only be detected with very powerful microscopes. I can't even imagine what it would be like if they were big enough to see with the naked eye. To throw back the covers and see several thousand dead skin gourmands the size of black widows or cockroaches is more than the human mind can manage.

63 years ago today...

On this date 63 years ago the U.S. dropped its secret weapon, the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima, Japan.


Three days later they dropped their other atomic bomb on Nagasaki, which led directly to the end of the war with Japan.


Those bombings by the U.S. are still the only times that nuclear devices have been used on civilian populations. Except for when the U.S. used nukes on its own people.


As told in The Day We Bombed Utah by John G. Fuller, atomic testing was done until the late 1950s in Nevada. Above ground blasts were held until the prevailing winds were blowing over Southern Utah, a "low yield" segment of the population.

Andy's Atomic Adventure is a propaganda comic book put out at the time. You can read the whole thing at the Hairy Green Eyeball blog. "Hey, kids! Getting radioactive fallout on you isn't all that bad! Your government can be trusted. Nuclear testing is in your best interest. We know what we're doing." We caught on to that lie, but it wasn't the first lie our government has told us, and won't be the last. For some reason they seem to find it necessary to lie to us a lot. At this point who can trust anything they say?

Today, August 6, is a day we should step back and remember that people, all of them innocent of any wrongdoing except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, have died from the use of nuclear weapons, in war and in peace.