Schooling?!

"Our culture lies. They say they want to encourage and reward individuality and creativity, but in practice they try to hammer down the pointy parts, and shame off the different parts." – Sandra Dodd

I know this post will be a departure from most of the things that I write about, but this is something that I'm passionate about – education; what and how we are trying to teach our kids.

Going through the traditional school system was never my favorite thing as a kid, but as a parent, I've grown to realize that the whole system is upside down.

Not the system of any particular state or nation, but system of education as a concept.

Traditionally, schools use this model:

• Decide on what kids need to know to prepare them for adulthood.
  
• Prepare a curriculum based on this.
  
• Give students a schedule based on this curriculum.
  
• Have educated teachers hand them the info they need, and drill them in skills.
  
• The student reads, memorizes the info, learns the skills, and becomes prepared.
  
• Students must follow all rules or be punished. This is actually more important than the info and skills, although it's never said that way.
  

Unfortunately, this isn't a great model. Mostly because it's based on the idea that there is a small group of people in authority, who will tell you what to do and what you need to know, and you must follow this obediently, like robots. And you must not think for yourself, or try to do what you want to do. This will be met with severe punishment.

This is ideal if you're going to be a corporate employee, and need certain skills in order to work for the corporation — mostly skills of obedience, actually. This isn't ideal for the workplace of the coming decade, when people are less likely to be employed by a large corporation, and more likely to work for themselves. And have to think and figure out things for themselves, what they want to do and when they want to do it. Let alone learn new things without a teacher.

Things are changing faster than ever before. Every month, new technology is announced that alters the way people work, or will work in the future, and we need to be able to learn and adapt to this ever-changing landscape.

How are we to do that? Or more importantly how are our children to learn to do that, if they have no authority telling them what they need to know, or how to learn, or what to do?

People often grow up to be competent learners, and achieve great things, after going through the traditional school system. But this is in spite of the system, not because of it. We are pretty adaptable people, inherently curious, and we can learn without an authority, but the current school system tries to beat this down. It usually fails to some degree, but to the degree it succeeds, it harms people.

Schools fail not because they don't impart knowledge or skills, but because they kill curiosity, smother excitement for learning, club down with a furious brutality our desires to be independent, to think for ourselves, to learn about things that actually interest us.

"I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas." - Agatha Christie

But Teachers are great…

Yes, I agree, they are. A very good friend of mine is a middle school teacher, of English, and she worked tirelessly with her students' interests at heart. She really wanted to teach them to love reading, and did everything in her power to do so. Unfortunately, she constantly frustrated by the authoritarian nature of school administration, and will soon be leaving that particular district maybe even teaching.

My great grandmother was a teacher for decades. My aunt was and my cousin is a teacher, of elementary and middle schools and both were wonderful at getting kids to love reading. I love teachers, and have the highest respect for them.

I just think they're in a system that doesn't work. That cannot work, given the nature of what the world has become.

How can we prepare children for a future we cannot foresee? How do we know what skills they will need, what knowledge will be important, in 10 years, or 15? We have no idea what the world will be like then. I sure don't. Do you? Does anyone know how people will be working 15 years from now?

I submit this is impossible. And what's more, it always has been impossible. The workplace now is vastly different than it was when I was a lad in short pants four decades ago running around in the schoolyard, wiping snot from my nose and learning about the Cold War. People then didn't have computers in the workplace, at least not most of them, and those who did have computers didn't have anything resembling what we have today. Most people used electric typewriters, and fax machines weren't in offices yet. Fax machines?!

So yes, I love teachers, and think they are incredible at what they do. What I think they need to do, though, is not be teachers, but facilitators.

Don't direct learning, because when students grow up they won't be directed in their learning, they'll be self-taught. Think about it: when you learn things today, as an adult, do you learn from a teacher, or do you learn things on your own? And isn't learning on your own more fun? Don't you love learning new things? Doesn't that make the learning stick with you for longer than when you had to memorize things in school?

What we learn in school isn't nearly as important as HOW we learn, because how to learn is the lesson of school.

"The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on their parents. So they provided jails called school, equipped with tortures called education." - John Updike

How to learn…the way we're taught to learn is as receivers of information, non-thinkers. Follow the rules. Read pages 100-132. Do the exercises. Memorize the information. Spit it out in a test. Do this project, because we tell you to, not because it's fun or interesting.

The way we need to be taught to learn is completely different. It's this: learn about what interests you, gets you curious, and gets you excited. Figure out where to get the information you need. Read about it, talk to someone about it, and find out about it. Try it. Do it, make mistakes. Figure out how to correct the mistakes. Figure out how to solve the problems you encounter. Repeat.

In other words, find problems that interest you, and figure out how to solve them.

Sometimes, you'll have to solve problems that aren't so interesting, just to solve problems that do interest you. That's OK. That's how things work.

And here's a secret: we already know how to do this. From birth. This method of learning is innate in all of us. It's built in.

When a toddler wants to do something, like get a stash of chocolate you've hidden on top of the fridge, he'll figure it out. He'll find ways to move a chair to the fridge, or climb up onto a counter near the fridge, in order to get the candy. Along the way he'll learn a thing or two about cabinet doors and fridge doors and why you shouldn't lean too far in one direction on a chair if you don't want to fall and get bruises.

When a kid wants to play a video game, he'll learn things like how to set up and turn on the Xbox, how to navigate menus, how to get started with the game, how to convince his mother that he'll clean his room later and that his homework is pretty much all done so that he can play the game now.

Kids know how to solve problems, when they want to do something.

We don't need to teach them to learn. We need to get out of their damn way.

And that's the problem with schools. They can't motivate kids to learn, because they're forcing it. They're trying to impart on them a rigid system of authority that kids naturally rebel against. In fact, this is the main problem kids face, and they come up with all kinds of incredibly creative ways to solve it, from skipping school and smoking pot to drawing incredible doodles in notebooks instead of listening to a history lecture to finding ingenious ways to communicate with peers, through technologies like texting and iPhones and through old technologies like passing notes and so on.

Creativity isn't dead in our kids. It's alive, but it's being marshaled to beat the forces that are beating them down.

"No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back." - John Holt

I think it's time to turn education on its head.

So how should we prepare our kids for tomorrow? Better people than I have written on this. It's pretty much just getting out of the way of kids. Let them learn about what they want to learn about, and you know what? They'll actually care about what they're learning, because they chose it themselves. They'll get excited about things, something schools usually fail to achieve.

They'll learn how to deal with the delicious problem of freedom, a problem most kids don't have these days. They'll get some hands-on, down-and-dirty experience with autonomy, something they'll have in spades as adults.

But what if they watch TV or play video games all day? What if they aren't interested in math or science and never learn them? What if they're totally unprepared for the workplace?

I'll just say a couple things. One, we need to relax and not look at childhood as a time when every minute needs to be filled up with rigid rules and learning. It's a time that should be enjoyed, and kids should play, and in playing they'll learn. They'll learn to play well and work well with each other. They'll learn how to figure things out for themselves. They'll learn to love the lovely freedom and its associates, autonomy and responsibility and choice and time management and, yes, passion.

Two, remember what we talked about above: we have no idea what the workplace of the future will be, so stop worrying about preparing them for that. In fact, stop worrying so much. Let kids learn how to learn, and learn how to be excited about things. That will prepare them for the future.

Three, also realize that we don't need to be hands-off. We can be hands-on, if we're facilitators instead of directors or dictators. We can help kids find things they're interested in, expose them to worlds of fun (like science and math), teach them games that they might like, help them solve problems so they'll learn how to do it on their own, guide them to resources and people who will give them mountains of information. Be there for them, as guides.

This is a huge topic, and one that I can't adequately cover in one post. I'll do another post sometime, but for today, I just wanted to throw out some thoughts on schooling, and get you riled up a bit perhaps. We could all use some good riling now and then, I think.

"To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves…and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted." - John Holt

Til next time…

—

More thoughts on exercise....

You are never too unfit, too young or too old to begin proper exercise program. Regardless of your age, gender or role in life, shape or size everyone can benefit from regular physical activity.

Getting moving is a challenge because today physical activity plays a very small role in our daily lives as there are fewer jobs that require physical exertion. We have become a society who is reliant on technology and machines rather than physical strength to perform our work and to get around.

In addition, we have become mainly observers with more people (including children) spending their leisure time pursuing just that - leisure which usually doesn't involve physical activity. Consequently, statistics show that overweight and obesity, along with the problems that come with it (high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, etc.), is on the rise.

Today, there is a growing emphasis on looking good, feeling good, staying as young as possible and living longer. It has been well proven that one of the keys to achieving these ideals is fitness and exercise. But if you spend your days at a sedentary job and pass your evenings watching television, it may require some determination and commitment to make regular activity a part of your daily routine.

To achieve a higher level of fitness, strength, health and wellness requires a sustained, commitment to regular exercise. Without this commitment, other priorities take over and consume our time. It is way too easy to put our exercise program on hold when something else comes up.

Sometimes this is unavoidable but when you find yourself putting your program on hold for months (until it gets warmer) or even years (when the kids are in school), then you are waiting too long. If not now, when will you really be less busy - next year?

A commitment to regular physical activity is a commitment to yourself and those you care about and that care about you. The difference between people who do reach their health and fitness goals and ones who do not is that successful people are willing to do the things that are necessary to reach those goals.

Firstly, you need to identify the habits and beliefs that are holding you back from accomplishing your goal. It is therefore important to identify these habits in order to plan a realistic strategy to eradicate the old habits and create new ones.

It is not necessary to pressure yourself to be perfect, all we should look for is improvement and we all have to start somewhere. So start where you are.

Even changing the way you think is a positive step towards new health and fitness goals. Demand a little bit more of yourself with each passing day. Work at making it a habit to think only positive things, work at making it a habit to reach your goals. Creating new habits, new plans, and new beliefs is what will get you to your goals.

Once you become aware of the power you really have, overcoming obstacles will be easier. After a few successes, your confidence will grow and it will be even easier to reach further towards your health and fitness goals.

Just remember that in any area of life you can have excuses or experiences, reasons or results. Your mind is a powerful thing so use it positively and allow it to help you develop self discipline. Make your exercise time a priority; schedule it into your diary like any other appointment and don't let anyone or anything get in the way.

You will be rewarded with loads of energy, new found strength and a vibrancy that only the fit seem to have. You will also find you have an inner sense of well being deep inside you that confirms you are doing all you can to look after yourself.

Til next time...

new friends....

Now that I have some time off to reflect I'm going to start to learn more about the rest of the world. I've spent 30 plus years delving into the science of the body. From cellular physiology to psychology. From traditional western medicine to a more spiritual mind/body energy medicine. It's been an interesting and eclectic ride, but there is just so much more to explore...


When I was in high school I was humbled by a group of folks - I guess we would call them nerds now days but in truth I was intimidated by the literature crowd. According to the dictionary the word nerd refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. Hey, if that is true then I was a nerd! It's just that enjoyed a good party every once in a while.

Yet in high school those "nerdy" types scared me with their 40 dollar multi-sylabic words. There were times that I could hold my own especially when history was involved, but when they started to discuss the deeper sides or Shakespeare, Solzhenitsyn, Voltaire or even Vonnegut just about every spincture in my body would pucker up. At the time I didn't feel like I could understand or learn this literature stuff... which is strange because I really do enjoy history and they do seem to go hand in hand.

But I have found that my interest in history and literature has been peeked again. It's really the fault of a 20 something who has quite a knack for explaining history. (Who says an "old man" can't learn at an advanced age!) What she does that is so critically important for my brain is that she has this ability to make the past come alive. I find that a whole new world is opening up to me and a different part of my brain is starting to work. Let me give you an example of how history tickles my fancy.

Sir Francis Bacon, made the ultimate sacrifice - He died in the quest for knowledge, and was for sure a martyr to the cause. I hadn't remembered too much about Bacon from school, except that he's suspected by some to be the "real" Shakespeare.

My guess is that he also wore a huge ruffled collar. And they say blogs aren't informative. Apparently, Bacon, a 17th century intellectual and politician had a troubled public life. He was convicted of taking bribes in 1621 and thrown into the Tower of London. His defense: yes, he took bribes, but they didn't affect his judgement.(And here we thought we had that king of thing cornered in Chicago). As a scholar, he wrote cleverly about language and the philosophy of science.

But my favorite about Bacon, the one that will stick with me, is how he died. It happened in March of 1626, north of London. Bacon was riding along in his horse and carriage when he suddenly decided he needed to know whether snow delays putrefaction. So he abruptly stopped his carriage, hopped out to buy a hen, and stuffed it with snow. Unfortunately, this caused him to be seized with a sudden chill, which brought on bronchitis, and he died soon after at a friends house.

To me this is a Nobel anecdote. Okay, it's a little embarrassing that his death involved frozen poultry. And maybe he displayed a touch of sadism - I'm just hoping the hen wasn't alive when he rammed snow into its gullet. But then there is something great about it. Bacon had such an itch for knowledge, he was so giddy about an idea, that he just went bonkers and bolted out of his carriage. The man couldn't wait another second to find out more about antiputrefaction techniques. I mean seriously, if your are going to give you life for a cause, furtherance of knowledge has got to be in the top two or three.

As opposed to Jeremy Bentham who was a British ethical philosopher who advocated the greatest good for the greatest number of people - died in 1832. After his death, in accordance with his directions his body was dissected in the presence of his friends. The skeleton was then reconstructed, supplied with a wax head to replace the original (which had been mummified), dressed in Bentham's own clothes ans set upright in a glass-fronted case. Both this effigy and the head are preserved in University College, London. I'm not quite sure how this contributes to the greater good of mankind - but I give him props for creepiness!

Hey this history stuff can be fun. And you never know what you might learn. Thanks Ash..
Til next time...

I’m back…

We live in an information overloaded society. There has not been a moment in history when information has been this available, right at our fingertips. By typing one simple phrase, we now get hundreds, thousands, sometimes even millions of answers to our most desired questions. And now it seems, because of the abundance of information available to us, that a lot of us are confused.

No more confusing has been our struggle with living excessively. As a result, many of us are in debt, have too much stuff and are overweight.

There are too many questions on how to exercise, how to eat, or how to live healthily - cardio or weights? How much protein? Does fat make me fat? Will sit-ups give me abs? Am I going to get big, bulky muscles?

I don't profess to know the answer to EVERY question out there, but I do know that all things being equal, the simplest answer is most likely the right one. That holds true in life as much as it does in weight loss, exercise and general health.

So in saying that, I have devised a list of The 7 Essential Rules to Optimal Health.

You may read these rules and be turned off that I'm insulting your intelligence. But let's face it, now more than ever, do we need to get back to the basics in order to save our waning, unhealthy & obese society.

We've veered off the path of "simple" and have really made things more complicated than they are.

1. Eat REAL Food.

For a busy population who doesn't have time to count calories or how many grams of protein or how much sodium or saturated fat, this is your answer to health and weight loss.

Anything that Mother Nature put on this earth in its simplest form is real food - unpackaged, unprocessed, unpreserved fruits, vegetables, legumes, naturally raised meat & fish. Steak from a critter that has been allowed to eat from a pasture, not an all-beef hot dog. Water, not soda. Apples, not apple fritters.

Here's the truth … if you eat nutritious real food then your body feels nourished and doesn't feel the need to consume more. If you eat the common processed food products of today with empty calories and little to any nutrition value, then your body needs to 1) work harder to digest and assimilate what you've eaten thus using energy 2) still feel hungry because what you've eaten provides no nourishment and 3) throw your systems out of whack because your body has no idea what you just ate.

2. Live Life Actively.

Our society was the healthiest when there were no such things as treadmills, ellipticals and Pec Decks. We used the gym to support our activities (like what athletes do). We rode our bikes, skied, surfed, played pick-up basketball and walked everywhere.

Now, we go to the gym. We run on treadmills like rats in a cage, partake in bodybuilding programs that give us bulky, "unuseable" muscles and create imbalance & injury, and do aerobic classes that give us little to no benefit with the way we look.

As our society transitioned from an active culture to a gym-going culture, obesity, heart disease and diabetes slowly started to increase. Coincidence? Maybe. But staying active and trying new things - playing a sport, going for a hike, being active with family, playing Frisbee with the dog- never killed anyone.

Ask yourself these questions…When was the last time you got excited to go to the gym (to actually workout, not to see the hot aerobics instructor or personal trainer)? And what about when you knew that the weekend was just around the corner and you were going to the beach to play some volleyball? Or out to the golf course with your buddies to play 18 holes?

Live actively and use the gym to support your efforts.

3. Get outside.

This goes hand-in-hand with the point above.

True that some of us live in a climate that isn't always conducive to outdoorsy things. Hogwash.

Unless it is 110 degrees in the shade or sub-Arctic temperatures outside, there are always options for us to be active outdoors - even if it's just for a walk after dinner. Our bodies crave the outdoors and being with nature. It's hard-wired into our systems. Being outdoors gives us a feeling of freedom and calm that no gym, mall or office building could ever provide for us.

4. Constantly strive to improve in order to see change.

If you are doing the same thing, day in and day out (lifting the same weights, running the same distance for the same time, etc) without any change or improvement, then nothing is going to happen to your body.

Your body wants to stay the same, and it is only when you decide to venture outside of your comfort zone that you will actually see any improvement - and that rule holds true with life as much as it does with exercise. Set goals, break records and constantly strive to get better. If you ran 5km in 30-minutes yesterday, then the next time out, aim for 29-minutes. If you did 10 push-ups yesterday, then aim for 11 the next time you attempt them.

Force yourself out of what's comfortable and you will change - both in body and in mind.

5. Get some sleep.

Often the "missing link" to everyone's weight loss quest is their lack of quality sleep. (This tends to be where I fall off the wagon.) Healthy adults require 7-9 hours of uninterrupted, good quality sleep EVERY night. Yea sure you say! But really, sleep helps regulate your hormones. It kills off bad bacteria that have accumulated in your gut throughout the day and it's the primary time for your body to repair its tissues - especially your muscles. Don't get enough of it and your immune response will suffer (your ability to fight off disease & sickness), you gain belly fat (because of the higher amounts of the hormone cortisol) and you'll experience lows in energy.

6. Practice Active Recovery.

This is the Yang to intense exercise's Ying and is probably the most overlooked rule. You were not designed to "go hard" 100% of the time.

Regardless of what you may believe, exercise, with all its benefits to your body and health, is still stress. Any response that produces an adrenalin rush will also produce a stress response in your body. Because of this, we must balance our intense exercise activities with calming, stress management exercises. Traditional yoga, tai chi, qi gong or some form of deep breathing or meditation are the most common examples of ways to handle stress.

Try to incorporate at least one of these activities into your weekly (if not daily) practice. Only a few minutes of deep breathing or mediation is all you need to regain balance move on with your day without anxiety or nervousness.

7. Use Natural Movements.

There are 5 natural movements - Squatting, Lunging (which includes walking & running), Pushing, Pulling & Rotation. If you want to save time, increase your results and live healthy, then all your exercises should incorporate at least one, if not more, of these movements.

Is there a need to stand in front of a mirror holding dumbbells and lifting them up to the side while standing on a ball? No. Is there a need to sit on a machine, strapped in and squeeze your thighs together or push them out? No. These movements are unnatural. They force you to break your body up into individual parts, when in truth, your body operates as a network of nerves, bones and muscles to move you and the objects you lift or carry from Point A to Point B.

Exercise naturally, move naturally, and you'll be more healthy.

So Now What?

Use the above rules as a checklist and try to incorporate and adhere to one rule per week, introducing a new rule each time you have mastered one.

Try not to get overwhelmed. This isn't a "shotgun" approach. We've gotten away from the basics of health and it will take time to get back. Just keep at it and be consistent and you'll get there.

Til next time…

What the heck is an "A-ak"?

Humm...

I was handed the first volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica the other day. We were cleaning out some shelves at work. It felt weighty...maybe even learned. Yet comfortable. When I cracked it open, the spine of the volume gave me a pleasant amount of resistance - something I've long forgot about while holding a real book - I read so much electronically now days. I was curious what was the first entry.

A-ak
A-ak, wtf is that? Here is the write up... "Ancient East Asian music. See gagaku. That's the entire article. Four words and then: "See gagaku."

What a tease! Right at the start, those way to smart for the room folks at Britannica have presented me with a dilemma... Should I dig into the pile and search for volume 6 and find out what is with gagku or move on in the A section?.... Don't see volume 6 nearby, let see what else is in the AA section. Of course if anyone else brings up "a-ak" in conversation between now and then I can play it cool, bluff and say "Oh, I love gagku!"

Next word, acapella - I knew that one, I had a friend in college that belonged to an acapella group - they sang songs from Def Leppard and called it Rockapella. Not bad one for two.

The next few entries destroy my average - I didn't even come close to recognizing the names of any Chinese generals or Buddhist compendiums. Aachen followed, but I got the wrong country - it is a German city that is home to Schwerbad-Quelle, the hottest sulfur spring in the country. Who knew?

I wonder should I be memorizing this stuff? I'll move on...

Aaron - the brother of Moses. Seems that he was sort of the Frank Stallone of ancient Judaism. The loser brother, the one that Mom didn't talk about too much. I can just hear it.."Oh Aaron? He's doing okay. Still finding his way. But back to Moses. Did you hear about the Red Sea?"

Hey this is cool stuff. I'm not Jewish, and really am a mix of religious training...probably got most of my religious lore for Charlton Heston movies - I wouldn't call my self observant, though out of respect I do have a light lunch on Yom Kippur. Hey maybe this could be my belated Hebrew school.... Nah.

Next.
Oh a bunch of Persian rules named Abbas, but then I get to these two familiar faces. "Abbott, Bud and Costello, Lou.", But any sense of relief fades when I learn about their sketchy past. Turns out that the famed partnership began when Costello's regular straight man fell ill during a gig at the Empire Theater in New York and Abbott who was working the theater's box office, offered to substitute. It went so well, Abbott became Costello's permanent partner. Well there is a cautionary tale, I'm never calling in sick again!

More facts, ABO blood group - hey did you know that stomach cancer is 20 percent more common in people with type A than those with type B or O. I'm type O, missed that one - however this just proves that reading this can be more disturbing than the tale of backstabbing Costello. Clearly I have to be prepared to learn some things I don't like!

Absalom - I knew about him getting his hair caught in the branches of an oak tree, which allowed his enemy, Joab, to catch and slay him. I figure this is why the army requires crew cuts. At least that is going to be my twist on it.

Oh and you can never forget the Acoemti, a group of monks who provided nonstop choral singing in the 5th century. They did it with a relay system-every few hours, a fresh monk would replace the exhausted monk. I love this image, though I'm glad I didn't live next door. We're talking 24 hour entertainment long before MTV went on the air. Quite possibly before Mick Jagger was born....

Reading this is much harder than I expected...but at the same time, in some ways, strangely easier. In some ways this is the perfect book for someone like me, who grew up on Peter Gabriel videos and has the attention span of a gnat on methamphetamines. Each essay is a bite sized nugget. Bored with Abilene, Texas? Here comes Abolitionism. Tired of that? The abominable snowman's lurking right around the corner -oh BTW, Britannica says that the Snowman's footprints are actually produced by running bears - I'm not convinced.

Reading Britannica is like channel surfing on a very highbrow cable system, the changes are so abrupt and relentless, you get mental whiplash. You go from depressing to uplifting, from tiny to cosmic, from ancient to modern. There is no segue, no local news anchor to tell you, "And now for the lighter side." Just white space, and boom you switched from theology to worm behavior. I don't mind though. Bring on the whiplash, the odder the juxtapositions, the better. That's the way reality is - a bizarre, jumbled-up Cobb salad. I love seeing the prophet Abraham rub elbows with Karl Abraham, a German shrink who theorized about the anal expulsive and phallic stages.

Oh yes, that another thing, just like Comcast cable, there is sex. It might not be Cinemax but it's got its fair share of randiness. I've learned that Eskimos swap wives. Achagua men have three to four spouses and flowers in the Acanthaceae family are bisexual! Now that is some racy stuff. Hot. Hotter than Schwertbad-Quelle sulfur spring. I expected Britannica to be prudish, but it seems quite happy to acknowledge the seamy world below the belt.

Titillating R-rated material, that is nothing compared to the violence! It's extraordinary how blood soaked our history is. One Persian politician was strangled by servants, another suffocated in a steam bath. Or Peter Abelard, and 11th century Christian theologian who, came up with some interesting ideas - namely that deeds don't matter, only intentions. You know the guy who coined the phrase "the road to heaven is paved with good intentions." Of course the article goes into great detail about his love affair with his student Heloise, which ended rather badly. Abelard suffered castration at the order of Heloise's outraged uncle. Maybe deeds do mater?!!

Sex, violence, MTV - all this makes my diversion in Britannica much more of an adventure and much cheaper than cable. Why don't you pick up a volume an see what you can learn.

Til next time...

Oh by the way, A-ak, is Korean court music - it is ritual music that is considered elegant it was imported from China. Not sure Madonna is going to record this anytime soon.

Life’s guidelines…

For those of you who know me I have been pretty public about the notion that I am going to live until 104. It's funny, but some of my friends' think that I am completely nuts thinking that I want to live to such and age; where others think it is pretty cool. Now you may ask, "How do I know that I am going to 104?" – I just do. I've always known it and it has been ingrained in my thinking all of these years - besides I have a great deal to do in the interim.

 

Well, I think I finally have the guidelines to make my goal. I was sent this via email and wanted to share it with you. Below, is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. A few years ago he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed.

Enjoy…

 

My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

 

'In those days,' he told me when he was in his 90s, 'to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.'

 

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: 'Oh,

bull----!' she said. 'He hit a horse.'

 

'Well,' my father said, 'there was that, too.'

 

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars – the Kollngses, next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

 

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

 

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none.

 

'No one in the family drives,' my mother would explain, and that was that. But, sometimes, my father would say, 'But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one.' It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

 

But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

 

It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car. Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.

 

So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. 'Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?' I remember him saying more than once.

 

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

 

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

 

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests 'Father Fast' and 'Father Slow.'

 

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: 'The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.'

 

If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, 'Do you want to know the secret of a long life?'

 

'I guess so,' I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre. 'No left turns,' he said.

 

'What?' I asked.

 

'No left turns,' he repeated. 'Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.'

 

'What?' I said again.

 

'No left turns,' he said. 'Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights.'

 

'You're kidding!' I said, and I turned to my mother for support.

 

'No,' she said, 'your father is right. We make three rights. It works.' But then she added: 'Except when your father loses count.'

 

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. 'Loses count?' I asked.

 

'Yes,' my father admitted, 'that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again.'

 

I couldn't resist. 'Do you ever go for 11?' I asked.

 

'No,' he said.' If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week.'

 

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003.

 

My father died the next year, at 102.

 

They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

 

He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

 

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, 'You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred.'

 

At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, 'You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer.'

 

'Why would you say that?' He countered, somewhat irritated.

 

'Because you're 102 years old,' I said.

 

'Yes,' he said, 'you're right.' He stayed in bed all the next day.

 

That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

 

He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:

'I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet.'

 

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: 'I want you to know,' he said, clearly and lucidly, 'that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.' A short time later, he died.

 

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns.

 

Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.'

 

So here is the deal, we don't always have to take left turns, we for sure can walk a little more and if it's a bad day, more than likely it can be put off to another day.

 

Til next time…