Stuff I Haven’t Done

This winter, I didn’t do much besides sleep. I did go to work, Walgreens, and occasionally church, and I’ve gotten myself severely hooked on this game.  (I recommend changing the size. 50×20 is a lot more fun and still fits on the screen if you zoom out to 80%) But that’s about it. If I think about it, I can come up with a pretty long list of valid excuses, several of which have been medically verified. The point, though, is that I really need to get myself doing Stuff again.

By now, we’re well into springtime, regardless of whether we’re going by the solar calendar, social conventions, or the weather. (On second thought, let’s not bring the weather into this. The weather is far too fickle to be given any kind of authority over people.) To be honest, I think that the season only has a slight impact on my productivity, but we’re going to pretend otherwise because that allows me to believe that I’ll soon have my life totally under control. It’ll be all good by summer at the absolute latest, right?

As a side note, I don’t understand why it’s considered negative or pessimistic to say you’re having a bad day. (Or week, year, semester, or any other unit of time) It seems to me that it shows optimism when someone says they’re having a bad day, because the implication is that the next day is likely to be better. Either the problem(s) at hand is/are minor and will quickly be resolved, or the situation will look better from the fresh perspective of a new day. Someone who’s being pessimistic and negative will think otherwise and expect current problems to stick around or to have ongoing repercussions. That attitude and expectation would not be accurately represented by talking about time in concrete terms.

But I digress. The semantics are irrelevant to my announcement that I intend to do Stuff.

At this point, I’m not committing to great feats of Thing-doing. I’m talking about relatively little Stuff. For example, I did a Thing last Monday. I came home from work, ate food, and read part of a book. (If you don’t see how that qualifies as a Thing, you can consider yourself lucky that you don’t fully comprehend the level of Not-Doing-Stuff that I have achieved) I’ve been regularly doing a Thing I like to call “Getting Into My Bed Before Falling Asleep Instead of Just Sleeping on the Living Room Floor”. (Okay, that’s not true, I’ve actually been calling it “Going to Real-Person Bed”, which doesn’t really make any sense now that I see it written out) At this point, I’m hoping to move onto bigger and better Things like establishing a consistent morning routine, regularly vacuuming the cat hair from my carpeting, and spending most of my free time in ways that are somewhat meaningful to me, like reading and writing. Notice how realistic I’m being here. I think I deserve some credit for setting realistic goals because I hate realistic goals. I much prefer unrealistic goals.

The main reason that I’m writing all of this is to avoid the generic blog post that basically just says, “I haven’t been blogging in a long time, but I think I want to get back to it.” So instead, I’m offering this brief ramble in which I vaguely overshare what’s been going on in my life. (Do I get extra credit for the double oxymoron?) But the sentiment is essentially the same. All of that was basically a lead-up to me saying that I hope I’ll be posting more stuff soon.

Long, long ago, the last time I posted something on this blog, it was supposed to be the first of a three-or-four part series. That’s still technically the plan, but the other parts aren’t coming for a while. It’s not that I was having a particularly hard time writing Part Two, or that I didn’t know what it should say. In fact, my draft in progress is quite long. It just isn’t very interesting. And right now, I’m not going to put time and effort into writing anything boring.

Rambling about Millennials, Part One

Pictured: said book

I recently read a book from 2006 that commented that we hadn’t yet coined a term to label the age demographic that comes after “Baby Boomers” and “Generation X”. Although that book wasn’t very outdated otherwise, that one sentence is now inaccurate and actually kind of funny. At some point shortly after that book was published, the media fell in love with the word “millennial,” and for a while now, it’s been consistently used as the name of a certain demographic group. The millennial generation is roughly defined as those who were children at the change of the millennium, although some have specified that millennials are those born between 1982 and 2004. (That parameter evidently was first laid out by authors Neil Howe and William Strauss, whose theories are more speculative than empirical, but worth googling if you find yourself with a few spare minutes)

At any rate, since I was born in 1991, I’m definitely well within this range and am indubitably a millennial. As such, I have a lot I’d like to say on various subtopics of millennial-ness, some of it addressing generalizations and some of it describing my own theories that are also more speculative than empirical. In fact, I have too much millennial-themed potential content to stick it all into one blog post, so this is going to be a multi-part series. (At this point, I’m thinking it’ll be four parts) A logical starting place is the very concept of categorizing people into specific age demographics.

Personally, when I was a child, I was under the impression that humanity essentially fell into three groups: children, teenagers, and adults. Sometimes, it might be convenient to sort adults into the categories of parent-aged adults, grandparent-aged adults, and adults older than my own grandparents, but for the most part, I thought of “growing up” as a sort of finish line. Getting there might be a gradual process, but once you passed the line, you were done, and you were just as grown-up as any other grown-up. Of course, I found out long before turning eighteen that a person’s entire lifespan, and not just childhood, is a series of changes and landmarks. But it still came as a bit of a surprise when, well into my twenties, the society around me still didn’t consider me fully adult. To some extent, I think this is a current trend caused by social and economic factors; the age of financial independence has been pushed far past the age of legal adulthood or physical maturation. That’s something I intend to write much more about later. But this isn’t entirely a modern thing; it’s always been true that there are major distinctions between different age categories even within adulthood.

If we’re talking about biological aging or cognitive changes or the gradual accumulation of knowledge, I would imagine that aging has happened at the same rate for at least many centuries, if not for all of human history. But if we’re talking about intergenerational differences, I think that things have really sped up since the mid- to late- 1800s. For the last 150ish years, technology has developed so rapidly that each generation is growing up in a very different setting than the last one.

Telephone history serves as an obvious example. After Alexander Graham Bell got his telephone patented, it took 46 years before a third of American households had telephones. At the time, that surely seemed like a major cultural shift. Communication was suddenly much faster and easier; the telephone changed the way we stay in touch with family and friends, seek help in emergencies, and interact with coworkers or customers. Yet 46 years seems like an awfully slow transition by today’s standards. Now, over three quarters of Americans own smartphones, just 23 years after the first one was invented, and it’s been a mere 10 years since iOS and the android operating system came into being. (The slightly-used iPhone 4 I bought in 2014 is so outdated that I’ve had strangers stop me to ooh and ah over my antique phone. I am not even kidding about that.) Similar statistics apply to various other appliances and devices.

But it’s not just about technology; along with those changes come shifts in every aspect of culture, from fashion and music to the prevalent philosophies and worldviews. The Renaissance period lasted for about three or four centuries, and the industrial revolution was several decades long, (anywhere from 60ish years to almost 200 years, depending upon what source you consult) but in recent history, we talk about decades rather than eras. I don’t think that’s a matter of nomenclature; I think that many of us genuinely think of the ‘80s or the ‘90s as bygone eras.

Long before I read the book that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I was formulating an explanation of generational differences (especially in terms of political opinions) that was based on these types of changes. It’s more than just technology and popular culture that changes over time; it’s also the political environment and the economic state of affairs. For example, I was born just as the Soviet Union was breaking up and the Cold War was ending. Although there has obviously been international tension and conflicts since then, (and one can certainly argue that some of it is linked to the events and attitudes of the Cold War era) the fact of the matter is that I grew up in a political environment very different from that of the previous few decades. The post-nuclear landscape was just a sci-fi setting rather than a plausible fear, “terrorism,” was a more common and frightening buzzword than “communism” and we didn’t talk about “mutually assured destruction” because we all knew that the USA is a superpower and that we had less to fear from actual war than from school shootings, suicide bombings, and the like. Even the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the more recent threats from ISIS are recognized as originating from fringe groups, not from entire nations. It’s a commonly accepted fact that people instinctively fear or dislike “the other”, but I’d posit that it’s a much weaker instinct for those of us who grew up in post-Cold-War America. Whether you see that as good or bad, whether you call it “tolerance” or dismiss it as extreme liberalism, I think it explains a good deal about intergenerational differences in political opinion.

My point here is that any explanation of “why millennials are so…” has to take into account the various factors that made the ‘90s and ‘00s different from, say, the ‘70s and ‘80s. I’m not going to pretend to have sufficient expertise in sociology, childhood development, politics, economics, etc., to make a comprehensive list of all such factors, but I can certainly suggest a few that I think are major ones. As I discussed in the paragraph above, the end of the Cold War makes a difference. Perhaps even more significantly, modern technology has greatly increased the speed of communication, and it’s also meaningful that the entertainment industry has made more rapid technological advances than other fields. While commercialization has been an issue for generations, advertising is just getting more insidious and subliminal all the time, subtly altering our collective priorities even as we become less and less trustful of mainstream media and of rich and powerful people. And the emphasis of self-esteem in parenting and education is a big deal too; in fact, it’s the main topic of the book I’ve mentioned a few times now. Sure, that trend originated in writings from around the turn of the century, but it picked up steam slowly, and my generation is probably the first to be indoctrinated into it enough to experience the drawbacks. Much more on that later.

Another biggie is the changing views on education. As higher education has gotten more and more common over time, it’s also become more and more necessary. We’ve reached a point where a college education is not only essential for success in most career paths, it’s also a social expectation for the entire middle class and those from wealthy families. But higher education has also gotten more expensive over the past few decades, and educational loans have become more common and much larger. For the last decade or two, it’s been considered normal to take out student loans by the thousands and tens of thousands. So that’s another thing that makes the millennial experience different than that of earlier generations: It’s now normal and supposedly inevitable for young people to enter adulthood with astronomical debt. No longer is debt something that happens to you if you hit hard times or make bad life choices; now it’s practically a coming-of-age landmark. And in general, it’s the people who rack up more debt who become recognized as high achievers and those who make decisions enabling them to avoid debt who are thought of as inferior, or at least less successful. It’s no wonder that young adults are more likely than older adults to believe that the government is responsible for our financial well-being. Socialism sure does sound nice when long-term debt is normal and when the “right” life choices are more expensive than the “wrong” ones.   

I’m not saying any of this to speak against or advocate for any particular political/economic stance. (For what it’s worth, I’m actually much more conservative than the average  or stereotypical person of my age demographic.) My point here is that “millennial” attitudes make sense in context. If I follow the vague outline I have for this blog-post-series, that concept of context is going to be really the central point of the whole thing. When you think about it, the only difference between generations is context. If you could somehow ignore the effects of cultural influences, technology, socio-economic circumstances, political environment, and social expectations, everything that’s left (basic personality traits, appreciation for things like nature or music, capacity for learning, etc.) might vary from person to person, but is pretty much constant from generation to generation.

Some Month-Old Thoughts on Politics and Patriotism

A month ago today, our country celebrated the 241^st anniversary of the day the Declaration of Independence was signed. As is fitting, I spent much of the day contemplating the meaning of patriotism, the quintessentially American rhetoric about liberty and freedom, and the relationship that those concepts have with morality in general. (Does patriotism make you a good person? If someone loves America, does that make them complicit with the shortcomings and injustices that exist in our society? Can an individual be proud of their country but yet dislike their government?) This is why I take ridiculously long showers, y’all. I had intended to blog about that topic later in the day and had even mentally formulated much of the content of that blog post. It would have been long, philosophical, and maybe a little bit boring. So I never got around to finishing it. But now, upon opening the Word document containing the very beginning of a very rough draft, I’d like to go back and use some of that content. What follows is a slightly edited version of what I wrote a month ago.

In the grand scheme of history, 241 years is an extremely short period of time. But since it is significantly longer than the human lifespan, every twenty-first century American views the Declaration of Independence as distant history and takes for granted (to some extent) the ideas it expressed.

Of course, those ideas weren’t completely new and original even at the time. The founding fathers were inspired by Enlightenment philosophy, perhaps most notably the writings of John Locke. And the quintessentially American emphasis on rights traces its roots to the Magna Carta of 1215. But 800 years is still only a small fraction of the millennia that organized government has existed. Besides, the Magna Carta was only about the relationship between the monarchy and the nobility, not the rights of the common people. And until the eighteenth-century, the concepts of equality and human rights didn’t play a large role in politics.

I think that we modern Americans don’t often think about just how new our “unalienable” rights are. It is certainly a beneficial thing that we have things like anti-discrimination laws, the freedoms laid out in the Bill of Rights, and the opportunity to vote for our leaders, but none of those things are universal throughout human history. That’s why we’ve made a holiday of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As Americans, we’re proud that our national identity is all about freedom, equality, and democracy.

Or is it? Take a look on social media or the news, and you’ll see lots of complaints about rights being denied, demographic groups being marginalized, voices not being heard, and needs not being met. Some of it may be petty or even inaccurate, but much of it will be valid. Despite our rhetoric about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the United States of America is not a utopian nation. At any given time, few if any American citizens are satisfied with the government, and most politically-informed Americans have feelings of animosity against fellow Americans with different political opinions. It certainly seems as if Americans hate America.

I would argue that this is a side effect of a democratic government. Because we elect our leaders and thereby have some degree of influence in our government, we pay much closer attention to politics than the average person in, say, medieval Europe. Most of us are more informed than we probably would be if we didn’t have any voice in our political system. All of us who make an effort to be well-informed are qualified to form and express stances on at least a couple specific issues, and many of us are to some extent emotionally invested in those issues. That’s not because we’re jerks who like to argue, it’s because the outcome could affect us or our family, friends, and neighbors. If I’m strongly against a particular proposed bill, or I actively dislike a certain candidate, it’s probably because I anticipate a negative impact on my day-to-day life, the life of someone I care about, or society as a whole. So when others support that bill or that candidate, it’s going to bother me. Personally, I try very hard not to be judgmental, but it’s hard not to question others’ morals or intelligence when they’re “wrong” about politics.

I believe that, in general, most political debates are far more complex than we tend to think, and that our opinions are less about right versus wrong than about assumptions that we don’t even realize aren’t shared. A lot of it comes down to the fact that, when our political ideology promises us all such broad rights and freedoms, there will be situations where there’s a conflict between one person’s rights and another’s. For instance, where does “freedom of speech” go too far and become discrimination or hate speech? At what point is “self-defense” too preemptive to be justified and lawful? Is it better to regulate immigration as much as possible to avoid letting dangerous, “un-American” people into our country, or do our American values dictate that we should welcome newcomers without discrimination and gladly grant them those rights we’re so proud to have?

And more broadly, what does the government owe citizens? Is education a right? And if so, how much can the government reasonably do to ensure the quality of public education? Is quality, affordable health care a right? And if so, what can the government reasonably do to ensure the quality and affordability of health care? To what extent does the government owe us financial assistance if we need it? And is it a good or bad thing if the government cuts funding to public services, financial aid for education, welfare programs, scientific research and the arts, etc. in order to lower taxes and/or decrease debt?

These are some of the questions that create partisan divisions and turn us against our fellow citizens. They are examples of the issues that cause us to dislike particular leaders and fear for the future of our nation. And all of these questions ultimately come down to our interpretations of freedom and rights. So how does patriotism fit into the picture? How can we love America if we can’t even agree on what exactly our American values are?

The initial plan was for this blog post to actually answer that question. I was going to have a lot to say about the history and ideologies of nationalism, populism, and globalization. It was going to touch upon the difference between cultural identities and officially delineated countries. It was going to include a tangent on separation church and state, as well as a very long and involved tangent about the relationship between church and state. It may have discussed topics relating to American superiority, ranging from the “city on a hill” rhetoric of very early colonial days to the controversies about current American military presence in other countries.

And it was somehow going to come to a nice, neat conclusion that would tie all of those threads into a surprisingly small and pretty little knot. I don’t know exactly how that would have happened, but it would have had something to do with the idea that both patriotic fervor and political vitriol are often motivated by goodwill for people in the society around us. Thus, it’s all good. No one is in the wrong except Hitler. It’s going to take a few more generations before it’s socially acceptable to include Hitler in any overarching statements about human goodness.

(By the way, the answer is no, if I could go back in time and kill baby Hitler, I wouldn’t. Instead, I would go back in time and tell teenage Hitler what a great painter he is and how important it is that he never, ever give up his art. Don’t let the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna crush your dreams, Adolf. Just keep painting and the world will thank you.)

But that would have taken much more time than I had available and much more research than I was prepared to do, not to mention that it would have been far too long for a single blog post. Maybe I’ll come back to some of those topics later. But probably not. Those long showers of mine mean that I will always have more blogging ideas than blogging time.

To a friend who has passed away

It’s been about eleven years since I knew you. You went to my family’s church, and my siblings and I loved to talk and laugh with you. I was just a teenager then, and I haven’t even been in touch with you since then, so I guess it’s a little strange that this is hitting me so hard. The first time I found out, I was evidently so upset that my mind simply couldn’t comprehend or retain that information. After the second time I heard that you had died, I was physically ill for several days; it took me about thirty-six hours just to get to the point where I could stay awake for more than a few minutes without passing out again. Now that it’s been several weeks, I’m more or less functional, but it’s taken me this long to get to the point that I’m capable of putting any of this into words.

One reason that this was so traumatic for me was that I found out online, (that second time, it was a news article, which was painfully concise and impersonal) and a bigger part was the particularly tragic circumstances. But more than anything else, it was because I had liked and admired you so much. I didn’t see you either as a peer or an authority figure, but something between the two and more cool than either. To me, you were the epitome of grown-up coolness. (It’s weird to realize that you were younger then than I am now) You were such a special person that you were important not only to those who knew you best or for the longest time, but also to that gawky early-teenage girl you used to quiz about Beatles lyrics. (If I recall correctly, you never did come up with a line that my sister and I couldn’t identify.)

A week or two after I heard you were gone, I searched through a couple boxes and found two of my old diaries that covered the time frame from when I was twelve to when I was almost fourteen. I was curious to see at what point my siblings and I got to know you. I don’t actually remember meeting you, I just remember a couple years’ worth of conversations and laughter over church meals and during youth group when you were the youth group leader. I’m pretty sure that the initial reason that my siblings and I liked you so much was your appreciation for our rambling cat stories. You were the kind of person who not only listened, but who remembered the names and personality quirks of other people’s cats. You were also one of the few people who understood why we named our cat Heidegger. (Because it’s fun to say, obviously)

Twelve-year old me didn’t think to document the first few times we talked to you, but your name did make regular appearances in those diaries. Usually, it was just a sentence or two quoting something funny you said or mentioning those pre-youth-group games of pool. (I’m still kind of embarrassed about that time I accidentally threw a pool ball at you. Usually, though, you were the one who would accidentally make the balls go flying off the table.) There was one passage about that time you came to my house. Technically, you were there to babysit, but we were thrilled about the opportunity to introduce you to our kitten and to play Legos with you. After my youngest siblings were in bed, the older ones of us sat around the living room and talked about cats for a couple hours until my parents came home.

Those kinds of conversations were actually some of the only positive things described in my diaries from that time frame. Overall, that was really not a high point in my life. (Not that being in that twelveish-to-fourteenish age range is a very enjoyable experience for many people) In retrospect, I think that those good times with you were even more important to me than I realized at the time. You made me laugh and you made me look forward to the Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings when we’d have a chance to hang out with you. You understood that my siblings and I were distinct individuals at a time when we were accustomed to being treated as a single unit. You gave me opportunities to take a break from the everyday things that made me unhappy and a reason to keep track of the perfectly normal experiences that would make funny stories later.

If my writing sounds disjointed or unorganized, it’s because it’s taken me about a month to write this. There is so much that I’ve written and then deleted, and then re-written and re-deleted, several times in some cases. There are so many things I’d like to say, and probably would say if I was actually writing a letter that you would read instead of a blog post about you. Or maybe I wouldn’t say any of that because that wasn’t the sort of thing we ever talked about. Maybe I would just want to share all those years’ worth of cat anecdotes. I can clearly picture how you’d laugh at the story about Melchizedek’s potato, or the one about when he stole all of my brother’s socks and hid them in my closet. And you’d be duly appreciative of Romana’s great beauty and sweet personality. I’d also want to let you know that I now have a greater appreciation of Led Zeppelin and quite like three of their songs, but I still don’t understand how you can think they’re even comparable to the Beatles.

But there’s one thing in particular that I’d really like to say to you, and that’s “thank you”. And maybe it’s best to end this blot post on that note. It isn’t a satisfying ending. It doesn’t make me feel better about missing your funeral or about never getting around to getting back in touch with you. It certainly doesn’t make me feel better about your death, but I don’t even want to feel okay about that because it’s not okay. It’s horrible, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do, unless thinking of you counts for something. But for what it’s worth, I will always remember you with appreciation. And maybe someday, I’ll name a cat after you or something. I think you’d like being commemorated that way.

Until we meet again,

Magdalena

The Price of Democracy

If you’re anything like me, right now, you’re pretty sick of politics. And by “sick of”, I don’t mean “bored with”. I don’t mean that the Superbowl or the upcoming Oscars are being cheated of the attention they deserve, or that I’m annoyed with my Facebook friends who frequently post reactions to current events or links to political articles. No, I mean that I’m sick of politics because current events are so significant. I’m sick of watching upsetting things happen in my country and not being able to do anything about it. I’m sick of hearing antagonistic, even hateful, rhetoric from people that I care about. I’m sick of watching people gobble up and repost not only content with opinions that I disagree with, but often blatant propaganda or “alternative facts”. (For the record, I’d like to point out that I’ve been jokingly using the phrase “creative truth” for years prior to this new terminology.) I’m sick of feeling like there’s nobody out there who has the same set of political values and priorities that I have. And I’m bothered by the realization that all of this vitriol is inevitable.

I expect that history will recall the late 2010’s and early 2020’s as a momentous cultural crossroads in America’s history, and by extension, in world history. The events of these next few years will determine many things about the future of our country. Naturally, Americans are very emotionally invested in politics right now, and naturally, we’re all upset about the problems we see and angry at those who are causing or perpetuating the problems that upset us the most. That’s not very pleasant for any of us. I, for one, would feel much more comfortable ignoring politics completely, or at least spending my life in a bubble that no one can enter unless they have the same political and social priorities, values, and opinions that I do. (Also, there’s a password, just because. Yes, I’ve already chosen the password. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is.)

But we can’t really do that. Not only is it impossible to live inside a literal password-sealed bubble, but it’s also impossible to ignore politics. Sure, you can refrain from participating in any type of political activism, arguing about politics, mentioning politics on social media or even casting your vote on election day. But even if you don’t participate in politics in any way, you can’t entirely ignore it because it defines the world around you. Technically, even the most obvious laws, like the ones about murder and theft, are defined and enforced via government. And it’s the government that ensures every right and freedom you have. Regardless of which laws you do or don’t agree with, which things you do or don’t believe should be considered “rights”, and whether you agree with how your tax money is spent, it’s undeniably true that those things are all factors that impact your life. One freedom that our government does not guarantee you is the freedom from politics. Since our country believes in freedom of speech, it cannot guarantee you freedom from hearing. And since the government cannot control your thoughts, (at least not entirely, at least not yet) you are not free from caring about political issues. The result of this is that you are also not free from political disagreement. That’s the price of democracy.

During this 2016-2017 campaign/ election/ inauguration season, I’ve avoided posting much about politics on social media. Not only have I not expressed my support or enthusiasm for any particular candidate, but I haven’t said much about specific issues or discussed which ones are most important to me. Admittedly, that’s partly because I’m an extreme people-pleaser; I don’t want to say things that could damage relationships, even those kinds of not-really-relationships where we haven’t talked in years and never knew each other well, but we’re still Facebook friends. But it’s also because I’m realizing more and more that my political views don’t even come close to aligning with any one political party, and I don’t want people to assume that I agree with stance X just because I expressed my support for an unrelated stance Y that happens to be associated with the same political party. But I’m guessing that most people who have read this far are curious about where I stand, unless they are assuming that they already know. So I might as well finish this post by making a few things clear.

I don’t trust or like Donald Trump. I didn’t like any of the candidates in the 2016 presidential election, but I ended up voting third party because it was, in my opinion, the least bad of several bad choices. I’m decidedly pro-life, but also very anti-misogyny, and I’m pretty horrified at some of the things I’ve heard people say about women and justify with “because I’m conservative” or “I guess I’m just old-fashioned.” I’m anti-illegal-immigration but pro-legal-immigration, so I want to see policies that facilitate legal immigration rather than policies that block entire demographic groups from crossing the border. I definitely agree that “Black Lives Matter,” but there have been some unacceptable things done in the name of that movement. I believe that the Muslim religion is incorrect, but I also consider it contrary to foundational American values to discriminate or segregate based on religion. I believe that any economic system (communism, socialism, capitalism…) would work well if everyone was honest and moral, but no economic system works perfectly because there will always be some people who find ways to take advantage of the system for personal gain. In general, I think history shows that there are more advantages than disadvantages to international trade and minimal restrictions and regulations, especially on small businesses. I agree that it’s positive for the government to play some role in ensuring quality of education, labor conditions, and health care, to provide some types of welfare for the underprivileged, and to offer funding for things such as scientific research, arts, and (obviously) public libraries, but I also think that most of those systems and programs are either overly-regulated, inefficiently-budgeted, or seriously flawed in some other way. I could go on, but I’ve already said enough in this paragraph to risk defeating the point of this blog post.

You can agree with me or you can disagree with me, and you can ignore me or discuss these things with me. (If you do, I’d appreciate if you’d keep it relatively polite and non-aggressive, please and thank you) Maybe, you can even cause me to reconsider some of my political views. But one thing that you cannot do is live in a society where we all have the right to be involved in politics and we all agree and get along. That just isn’t the way it works.

Particularly Awesome Books of 2016

I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted on this blog. And even now that I finally am back here clicking that “Publish” button again, it’s just a reblog from my other blog. But this is something I spent a lot of time compiling, and besides, my 2014 list and 2015 list made their first appearances on Kaleidoscope49. It only makes sense to stick the 2016 list here, too. So feel free to ignore this post or to read it thoroughly and then find and read all of the books that pique your interest. And hopefully, I’ll be back with more new posts sometime soon.

Particularly Awesome Books of 2016

This list has been a long time in coming. Not only have I spent an entire year reading a whole lot of children’s literature and keeping a running list of books that I especially liked, but it’s tak…

Source: Best Books of 2016

25 Years Old

I was born on September 6, 1991. Thus, today is my 25^th birthday. Rather than going into a ramble about how I feel about being 25, I thought that an interesting way to observe my birthday online would be to compile a list of other interesting things that are turning 25 this year. As it so happens, though, I didn’t really participate in ‘90s pop culture. I’m not even familiar with many of the movies, TV shows, songs, and albums that came out when I was a kid. But here are a few things my age that do mean something to me.

Books

For those of you who don’t know anything about me, I’m a librarian, so this is the obvious place to start this list. I had thought I could pull together a much longer list of 1991 books that I’ve read, but this is what I found with a moderate amount of googling. (The NoveList website appears to be temporarily down, which is annoying.)

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

My parents gave me this book for my birthday when I was a child; I think it was my eleventh birthday. It’s a Norwegian book about a teenager named Sophie Amundsen who starts receiving mysterious letters about philosophy. Over the course of the novel, Sophie learns about the history of philosophy from ancient times up to the late twentieth century and discovers the strange truth about the reality in which she lives. I very much enjoyed this book and have read it a number of times over the past fourteen years.

Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

Apparently, I really loved this book when I was little. I don’t distinctly remember that, and I don’t even remember what happens in the story, but I do have a vague sense of long-term positive associations with Henkes’ mouse books.

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Okay, time for a confession. I’ve never read Shiloh. I know, it’s a classic, and it even won the Newbery medal. I should have read it as a child and I should have read it as a children’s librarian. But I still haven’t read it, so I don’t actually have anything to say about it.

If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff

It’s not quite as noteworthy as If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, but it’s still a really good picture book. I vaguely remember hearing Numeroff books in library storytimes. For the record, her books are still popular among preschool-aged kids. Last I knew, my cousin’s daughter was fond of them.

Bone by Jeff Smith

This graphic novel is the first in a series that, as a children’s librarian, I can tell you from personal experience is still immensely popular. To be honest, I really didn’t care for this book and I never bothered to read the rest of the series. I think it’s a genre preference thing, and this just isn’t the type of story that appeals to me. I actually hadn’t known that it had been around for so long.

Meet Felicity by Valerie Tripp

The American Girl series played a really large role in my childhood. My mother started reading the books to me and my sister as bedtime stories. I think we were about six at the time. As I got older, I read and reread the American Girl books so many times that it became a personal tradition, and I was still reading them for nostalgia purposes in my late teens. When I was little, I don’t remember having a particular affinity for Felicity, (for any of you unfamiliar with the American Girls franchise, Felicity is a nine-year-old girl living in colonial Virginia) but as an adult, I think that Felicity is notable for the character development she shows across the sub-series about her. The American Girls were such a big thing in the ‘90s that sometimes I feel as if it’s strange that not everyone is familiar with them now.

Movies and TV shows

I don’t watch a lot of ‘90s TV. For this list, I’m only including movies and TV shows that I’ve actually seen, and that eliminates a lot of stuff that’s actually really famous, like Terminator 2 and the show Seinfeld, which debuted in 1991. But there are at least four 1991 movies that I’ve seen, which are as follows:

Beauty and the Beast

I remember Beauty and the Beast  as one of those classic Disney movies that has literally always been around. But it hasn’t been around forever. In fact, I was around for eleven weeks before Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was. I had been completely unaware of that fact until I started looking things up for this blog post.

Drop Dead, Fred

At one point a couple years ago, I would sometimes watch full-length movies on youtube late at night, and this was one that I discovered on one such occasion. It’s about a woman who starts seeing her childhood imaginary friend after going through rough times and moving back in with her mother. Although Fred, the imaginary friend, is goofy and acts like a character in a light-hearted children’s movie, I wouldn’t classify this as a kids’ movie. I wouldn’t rank it anywhere near the top of the list of my favorite movies, but it definitely has a few good one-liners.

Star Trek VI:: The Undiscovered Country

I know I’ve seen this one, but to be honest, I don’t specifically remember what happens in it. I do know that it isn’t nearly as good as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. But really, when it comes down to it, there aren’t many things out there that are as good as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

What About Bob?

Bob Wiley suffers from severe phobias until his new psychiatrist somehow cures him with just a brief, cliché-ridden consultation. But now Bob is obsessed with Dr. Leo Marvin and follows him to his vacation home. Through a series of comedic events, Bob simultaneously makes Dr. Marvin miserable and endears himself to everyone else. The title role is played by Bill Murray. It’s very entertaining, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the “bad guy”. Dr. Marvin may be flawed and self-centered, but he doesn’t deserve all the terrible things that happen to him in this movie.

Music

I spent way too much time searching for music I recognized from 1991, and I sure didn’t find much. I do know some ‘90s music, but just by coincidence, hardly any of it is from ’91. It’s actually kind of weird.

(Everything I Do) I Do it For You by Bryan Adams

Since my parents still listened to current pop music at the time when I was born, I have been informed many times that this song was #1 when I was born. It also happened to be the biggest hit of the year. To be honest, I don’t really like it. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘90s music in general.

Don’t Cry by Guns N’ Roses

I definitely didn’t know this song when I was a kid. But I know it now, so on the list it goes. It’s a good song. I like it.

You’re in Love by Wilson Phillips

The only reason I know this song is that it’s on a cassette tape that my father recorded to celebrate Christmas. In fact, the chorus is the only part that I know at all. I’m actually a little confused as to whether this is actually a ’91 song. Youtube says 1990, but my Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits says 1991. Maybe it was on an album before it came out as a single?

Other

Dr. Seuss died on September 24. That’s right, folks, for eighteen days, Dr. Seuss and I were alive at the same time. Other notable deaths include British ballerina Margot Fonteyn, modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, Freddie Mercury of Queen, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and Gilligan’s Island actress Natalie Schaeffer.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the United States. I’m not much of a gamer, but I recognize that this was a significant cultural event. I have no idea, though, what distinguished the 1991 Nintendo from the 1985 Nintendo.

The internet became a thing. Actually, the development of the internet was a gradual process that spanned over a significant portion of the late 20^th century. But the first web browser was created in 1991, and that’s a pretty significant milestone. If I understand correctly, that’s what really made the internet accessible to the public rather than just to computer experts. The web browser was called WorldWideWeb, but later named Nexus because it’s kind of confusing that WorldWideWeb and the world wide web aren’t the same thing. Nexus no longer exists.

Many of the biggest news events of the year had to do with the Gulf War, but the biggest political change with the end of the Soviet Union. Depending upon which events one defines as the birth of an independent country, one could say that I share a birthday with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. (But it probably makes more sense to go with the late August dates.)

On the Olympics

The Olympic games are important, y’all. They’re an international tradition, they’re good entertainment, they’re an opportunity to learn things about other places, they bring well-deserved attention to athletes who have worked hard for their achievements, and they’re an occasion for us to take pride in our country instead of arguing about politics and worrying about our nation’s future. I’m not trying to say that it’s everyone’s patriotic duty to drop everything and dedicate two weeks of your life every couple of years to watching the Olympics; most of us have lots and lots of other important things going on in our lives. But I think it’s a positive thing when people get excited about the Olympics, and it bothers me when others criticize or make fun of the Olympics.

When the Olympics started last week, I decided that I wanted to write a blog post about how cool the Olympics are. I wasn’t sure when I’d get around to doing it, (this summer has been a really crazy time in my life) and I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to say, but it seemed like something worthy of a blog post. I was thinking maybe I’d just ramble about some memories I have of Olympics in the past. I definitely have a lot, since my family always put a lot of emphasis on watching the Olympics. Even though we didn’t watch much of any TV at any other time, when the Olympics were on, our daily schedules were completely dominated by the television coverage of the games. I was used to admiring the athletes’ talent and dedication, appreciating the international and multicultural nature of the games, and enjoying the spirit of friendly, respectful competition between countries. Yes, I am aware that there have been instances of less than perfect sportsmanship in the Olympics, but it’s always seemed to me that those are the exceptions rather than the rule. And I guess I always assumed that more or less everyone held the Olympics in high regard.

The other day, I saw a youtube video that bothered me. (Here’s the link, if you want to see it)  I’ve come across videos from this channel before, and normally I find them pretty funny. Most of the ones I’ve seen have satirized cultural trends that I agree are pretty ridiculous. But this video is about the Olympics. I’m not going to address it point by point because a) this blog post could get pretty long if I did, and I want to finish writing it by suppertime, and b) some of his points are probably valid. I think what bothered me about it is that he portrays Olympic athletes as victims. When he talks about gymnastics, he accuses gymnasts’ parents of being abusive by “living through” their high-achieving children and insinuates that elite gymnasts are traumatized by their intense training. And later, when he talks about swimming, he says that the reason Michael Phelps is back in the pool is that he doesn’t know what else to do with his life. He repeatedly makes the implication that the viewing public is taking advantage of our miserable athletes by getting enjoyment out of the successes that they’ve worked so hard to achieve.

I don’t know the exact backstories of every individual athlete, and I can’t read their thoughts or emotions, so I’m not going to try to insist that everyone who’s ever competed in the Olympics has enjoyed the experience and gone on to live happily ever after. In fact, I know it’s true that people who work hard enough to get that good have made a lot of sacrifices in their lives. That’s one of the reasons that they’re so admirable. And I’m sure that it’s tough to be a former Olympic-level athlete who has to shift gears and work towards other goals and focus on academics or a career or family. But throwing around words and phrases like “abusive” and “traumatized” and “inevitable emptiness of the rest of his life” is unnecessarily negative. Most of these athletes work so hard because they love their sport, and I suspect that most of them mean it when they talk about how happy they are to be at the Olympics and when they say that their hard work has been worth it.

Of course, there’s a lot that could be said about personality traits and the psychological nature of perfectionism and competitiveness. I’m not an expert in sports psychology, or even general psychology, but I do know that people who are overly perfectionist often have a tendency to work harder than is healthy, emotionally or physically. Although I’m obviously not an Olympic athlete, I am an extreme perfectionist and I can attest to the fact that it can hold you back in a lot of ways, even if it’s (at least in the short term) pushing you ahead in other ways. And it’s probably true that most Olympic athletes are perfectionists, which is how they got that good in the first place. I definitely acknowledge that there’s a degree of truth in the concept that high-achieving athletes face emotional struggles even beyond the pressure and nerves associated with the actual competition. But I definitely don’t agree with the way that topic is expressed in this video. Because it’s not true that these athletes have dedicated an entire lifetime of hard work into a fleeting moment of glory, only to go home to meaningless lives. I would hazard a guess that the glory lasts for a lot longer than a moment, and that there are other goals to pursue after the Olympics.

Also, can we just take a moment to acknowledge how incredible the American women’s gymnastics team is, and Simone Biles in particular? I mean, she’s so good that this was barely even a contest this year.

So I hope that most of you reading this post have gotten to see at least some coverage of the Olympics. I hope that you’ve enjoyed cheering for your country and your favorite athletes. I hope that you’ve learned something about Brazil and/or some of the other places you’ve heard about. And I hope that instead of pitying the athletes because you think their achievements are pointless, you’ve been impressed or even inspired by their accomplishments.

Socrates vs. Literacy

Reading is among the most important skills that people can learn. It is necessary in school and in most types of jobs, it is a valuable source of information, and it is a wonderful form of entertainment. As a librarian, I consider it part of my job to promote literacy and the enjoyment of reading. But literacy as we know it has not existed for all of human history. I wrote a post a few days ago on my other blog about the history of literacy. In the process of pulling together my facts, I came across a few fun tidbits that didn’t make it into that post. One of the most interesting was a list of reasons that the great philosopher Socrates opposed written language.

Socrates lived in Athens in the fourth century B.C. At that time, the Greek alphabet existed and many Athenians were literate, but reading and writing were not as widespread as they were a couple generations later. Socrates is known for his oral discourse. He would converse with people on the streets, mainly by asking questions. Most of what we know about him comes from Plato, who was his student. Plato wrote extensively, but Socrates himself did not record any of his philosophical ideas.

Socrates’ back-and-forth method of philosophizing leads to one of his concerns with the written word. Written language is more permanent and unchanging than the spoken word. In a conversation, you can ask questions and give answers, you can clarify what someone else meant, you can amend what you have previously said or inform others that you have changed your mind. Of course, you can do any of those in things in writing, but the original book or essay or facebook post still exists in its original, inflexible state. Of course, Socrates didn’t anticipate the internet, where conversation can happen via written word in real time, and where posts can be edited. If he had, maybe that would have somewhat satisfied him on this point.

However, another one of Socrates’ complaints is something that is even more valid in the days of the internet than it was in his own time. Socrates put a lot of emphasis on Truth with a capital T. He believed in the importance of knowledge, which didn’t just mean knowing facts, but having a thorough understanding of Truth. Knowing a lot of factual information was, in Socrates’ eyes, a superficial form of knowledge. But it is that type of knowledge that is most easily transferred via books. By making information readily available to all people, we encourage a look-it-up mentality which, to Socrates, is very inferior to the seeking of wisdom. Although Socrates is known to have a very egalitarian view, he feared the idea of making information accessible to the “wrong people”. Even worse, the written word isn’t necessarily true, but someone who is just quickly looking up a fact is easy to fool. That’s where the internet is worse than books. Since anyone can post things online, the internet is full of quick facts without context and false information.

Finally, when people learn to rely on written language, it affects their ability to remember oral language. Although the Greeks are remembered for their contribution to written language, they also had a very strong oral tradition. As in many non-literate cultures, they remembered their history and their folklore by telling and retelling the stories, and therefore, individual people had to develop the skill of remembering words with great accuracy. Many making that information more quickly accessible, writing things down decreases the need for that kind of memorization.

In my opinion, Socrates’ concerns are valid, but the advantages of literacy outweigh the disadvantages. It’s true that the written word is less flexible than the spoken word, but sometimes, that’s a good thing. It’s true that the ability to read makes it possible for people to gain very superficial knowledge, but superficial knowledge is better than ignorance. It’s true that relying on written language decreases the ability to remember oral culture—and that is perhaps the most compelling argument ever made against written language—but the ability to remember things with absolute accuracy is sometimes more valuable than the ability to remember things without any help.

In our own time and culture, it would be unheard of for someone to claim that literacy is a bad thing. I don’t think I’ve said anything controversial by disagreeing with Socrates on this point. But it is interesting to stop and think about his objections and just how sensible they are. As cultures change over the centuries and millennia, our methods for storing and sharing information have naturally changed, and they will probably continue to change. (I, for one, do not think that the print book is on its way out anytime soon, but perhaps in another two thousand years, it will be.) For any change as major as that, there will be downsides. And as far as Socrates’ concerns go, it’s interesting to note that we wouldn’t be able to remember and discuss his ideas if Plato hadn’t written them down.

Happy Leap Day!

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as the month of February. Februarius, as it was originally called, was invented around 700 BC by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. The month was named for Februa, a festival of purification probably originating from Sabine culture. (The Sabines were one of many tribes that lived in ancient Italy) Februa fell on February 15. Even then, February had 28 days, although most months had an odd number of days because that was believed to be lucky.

Because the calendar was 355 days, which is not the exact same length as the solar year, it was necessary to sometimes add a month between February and March, known as the mensis intercalaris. (As a side note, Plutarch, a famous writer in the first century, referred to the intercalary month as Mercedonius.) Years with that extra month would be 377 or 378 days. But the system had its shortcomings. Evidently, the decision about which years needed an extra month was often made for political reasons, allowing political officials to stay in office for an extra month. And the common people didn’t necessarily know ahead of time, with the result that it was hard to keep track of the date. Clearly, calendar reform was in order.

The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in the year now known as 46 B.C. That particular year is called the Year of Confusion because he made the year 445 days long in order to put all the seasons back where they belong in the calendar. Then, in 45 B.C., things were back on track with a 365-day year. Even then, there was such as thing as leap day, owing to the fact that the Earth actually takes about 365.25 days to orbit the sun. But “about” isn’t good enough. Every year, a discrepancy of 11 minutes and 14 seconds was added.

By 1582, this discrepancy had added up so much that Pope Gregory XIII solved it by deleting ten days during October. It was also Pope Gregory XIII who determined that February was the month to gain an extra day during leap year. He was even responsible for the terms “leap year” and “leap day”.  In order to keep that discrepancy from continuing to occur, leap day no longer occurs in years ending with 00 unless they are divisible by 400. Thus, 2000 was a leap year, but 1900 was not and 2100 will not be. This results in leap years occurring at the right frequency to keep the average length of the year accurate… almost. The Gregorian calendar still has an extra 26 seconds per year.

Because of its infrequency, a number of legends and customs have arisen around leap day. According to Irish legend, St. Brigid and St. Patrick agreed that on leap day, women can propose to men. In some parts of Europe in the middle ages, if a man refuses a woman’s proposal on leap day, he must buy her twelve pairs of gloves to hide the embarrassment of her lack of an engagement ring. In Scotland, it is supposedly unlucky to be born on leap day, and in Greece, it is unlucky to get married on leap day, or even in a leap year.

Whatever you do to celebrate this extra day in the calendar, have a happy leap day!