Category Archives: insight

May 15, 2016 · 8:40 pm

A Question of Gender

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As an almost sixty-year-old heterosexual man with a wife and three kids, I am really not in a very good position to pontificate on the North Carolina transgender bathroom controversy. I play with dolls and stuffed animals (though in my defense, it is more of a collector and wannabe toy-maker style of thing). A couple of my children may actually decide to consider themselves bisexuals (though in their defense, almost all teenagers go through this sexual-identity angst and it is fluid, not carved in stone). The religion I professed for most of last twenty years says that we should hate gender problems and treat them as a wicked lifestyle choice, not a genetically determined spot on the flexible continuum between male and female.

But I have known transgender people as a school teacher who was always approachable and who students often trusted with their deepest, darkest secrets. And teachers, by the very definition of the profession, care about students. The insensitivity of this stupid controversy breaks my old teacher-heart.

The truth is, transgender people in this country inhabit a bear pit full of angry bears that wish to rend them with claw-like condemnations and bullying treatment all because their preachers and opinion leaders tell them that they should be angry about this. But whose business is it really? And all the transgender people I have ever known, all two of them, were incredibly damaged people. Suicide is the most likely result of the depression and self-loathing that most transgender teens experience. I pray that such a thing doesn’t happen to children whom I have taught and tried to love for who they are. But it happens.

(I need to warn you… the next part is not funny at all… nor is it intended to be.)

My example story does not have any names attached. I will not tell you what happened in the end because transgender people are entitled to privacy. But I am using a concrete example because I want to share with you things I know to be true. The boy I am telling you about was really born a girl. He was a boy on his birth certificate because an accident caused by hormonal imbalances during gestation gave him a penis on the outside even though he had internal girl parts, including ovaries. He was not a hermaphrodite, though he was closer to being that than he was to being normal. His culture forced him to be raised as a boy, even though his thoughts and actions revealed him to be a girl. The people around him had decided he was gay by the time he was old enough to be in my classes. He was bullied, insulted, and abused in very Catholic and homophobic community. Things got even worse as he began to develop breasts. It was no wonder he acted out in school. The image burned into my memory was the day he threw a fit in the school hallway and had to be restrained so he would not continue to smash his forehead against the doorpost. He was screaming and crying and ended up having to be hospitalized on a protracted suicide watch. I never found out what set off the meltdown, but I can imagine based on the things I saw people do and say to him. I believe he eventually had a sex-change operation in his twenties. I pray that was a true rumor and not just wishful thinking on the part of some of his former friends. That would’ve solved much of his problem, if only it had been an option before so much damage was done. It might’ve been better if he had been allowed to dress and act like a girl from early childhood on… like the other one I know about but can’t say any more about. They deserve to keep whatever dignity and respect they still have. We don’t have the right to take it from them.

This has been a very difficult thing to write about. I hope, if you read this far, that I haven’t made you cry as much I as I did myself. But crying is good, because it means there is caring in a place where more caring and understanding are desperately needed. There are places to gain more knowledge about this issue, and I hope that you can see that more knowledge is what is most critical to resolving it. Let me offer a link from a right-hearted clergyman to help you know a little bit more.

A Baptist Pastor Tells You What He’s Learned About Transgender People.

Cool School Blue

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Filed under angry rant, compassion, Depression, education, empathy, insight, medical issues, mental health, politics, red States, teaching

Tagged as angry rant over politics, human dignity, Red State mistakes, Representative Alan Grayson, transgender issues

May 9, 2016 · 6:31 pm

The Surrealist

Yes, I admit it. I am a Surrealist. I also hope that it is not too terrible a thing to be. Because I truly think that everyone who was raised by television, and lived through the revolution where computers took over human life, is one too.

definition from Merriam-Webster;

Simple Definition of surrealism;

a 20th-century art form in which an artist or writer combines unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike way

Full Definition of surrealism;

the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations

There is a certain satisfaction to be had in knowing for certain how to define oneself. I learned about Surrealism in high school art class back in the early 70’s. I saw and admired the works of Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst. And I realized that everything I wanted to do in the Realm of Art, whether it was weird paintings, cartoons, comic book art, or bizarre puppet shows… fantasy, science fiction, or humor… it was ALL Surrealism. Surrealism saturates out culture and our very thinking. We are drawn to watch baseball by the antics of a giant pantomime chicken. Our food choices are influenced by a happy red, yellow, and white clown who battles a blobby purple monster and a hamburglar over shakes and French fries. It is only natural then, that I would want to draw bug-sized fairies who would saddle and ride a red rooster. I have embraced surrealism as a way of life.
I have no trouble writing a poem about the difficulties of life by writing about a game of bowling where you have to roll a moose down the alley into the pins.
Surrealism is all about creating things by lumping all kinds of disparate goodies into the same pot and cooking it up as a stew. It is important that the stew tastes good in the end, so the mixture has to have large doses of reality and realism in it. Dali painted melting watches and boneless soft-sculpture people with almost photographic realism. I am compelled to do that too.
And what is humor, after all, if not lumping strange things together into a reality sandwich that makes you laugh because it takes you by surprise? I don’t shy away from weirdness. I embrace it. It makes life all the funnier.
And why did I put bullet points on everything in this post? Because it allows me to mash bits of wit and wisdom together in a weird way that only seems to have no connection, one to the other, and only seems to make no sense.
Sometimes we just have to look at things sideways.
I was recently accused of being eclectic in my posting topics by one regular commentator. I could wear that word like a badge of honor.
Definition from the Urban Dictionary;
eclectic

This describes a combination of many different individual elements of styles, themes, mediums or inspirations pooled from many sources. It can refer to musical tastes, dress sense, interior design…many things.

She has an ecletic sense of style, today she wears biker boots, pink fishnet stockings, a pencil skirt, a military jacket, a baseball hat, a my little pony t-shirt and a dunlop bag covered in badges from all her favourite bands from ABBA to Kooks

by Ezmerelda August 28, 2005
So, if I am going to make sense of this whole mess of words and ideas and bizarre images, let me do it with a picture that I think is surreal.

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Filed under art criticism, artwork, humor, insight, Paffooney, philosophy, surrealism, Uncategorized

Tagged as humor, juxtaposition, Mickey, Moose Bowling, paffooney, surrealism

May 6, 2016 · 3:53 pm

Wisdom From the Bob Ross Bible

If there is a Church of Sacred Landscapes then Bob Ross is its Jesus Christ. That is not a sacrilegious statement of bizarre cult-mindedness. Painting is a religion that has its tenets. And Bob Ross explained to us the will of God on his painting show on PBS. All the illustrations used in this post come from the Facebook page Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. All the wisdom comes from things the Master said on the show.

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Bob Ross was the prophet of the paintbrush. He would present us with a lightly prepared canvas at the beginning of the show and then proceed on camera to take his brush and palette knife, and all his paints, and create a piece of the world before our very eyes. And he was not Picasso or Van Gogh or even Norman Rockwell. He was not a talented artist, but rather a very practiced one who knew all the tricks and shortcuts to sofa painting, the art of knocking out scene after scene after scene. He could make his little piece of the world in only half an hour, and he made it obvious how we could do the same. His work was not gallery quality… but his teachings were Jesus-worthy. 1918971_1025737477472968_4026443126606690255_n

His work was natural, flowing, and realistic in the random complexity it presented. He took standard paintbrush strokes and pallet knife tricks and made them dance across the canvas to make happy little trees.

His painting methods presented us with a philosophy of life and a method of dealing with whatever mistakes we might make.

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And of course, any good religion must take into account the existence of evil.

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Bob Ross tells us that evil is necessary as a contrast to what is good and what is true. We need the dark. But we don’t have to embrace it. Bob’s paintings were never about the dark bits. He always gravitated towards the light.

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Of course, sometimes you have to beat back the darkness. A good artist takes care of his tools.

Bob Ross admonishes us to look and to learn and love what we see. The man radiated a calm, gentle nature that makes him a natural leader. His simple, countrified wisdom resonates because we need calm and pastoral peace in our lives. It is one of the main reasons mankind needs religion.

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So I definitely think we ought to consider building a Bob-Rossian Church of the Sacred Landscapes. We have our prophet. The man has passed away, yet he is risen to paint again endlessly on YouTube.

And if you are willing to try… Bob Ross will smile upon you.

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Filed under artists I admire, artwork, humor, insight, inspiration, religion, sharing from YouTube, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as art instruction, artwork, Bob Ross, humor, Joy of Painting, painting is a religion

April 6, 2016 · 3:37 pm

Where Does Creativity Come From?

Ima mickey

Okay, I hooked you in with a title that sounds like I actually know something and somehow have some expertise to share beyond the usual brain-drippings of a noodling writer-type idiot. Unfortunately I don’t. I am a practicing creative person. But do I know how it works? I do not.

Self Portrait vxv

I suspect that it has something to do with my actual life experiences. I am not God. When I get a creative idea, it is made from known things. I don’t snap my fingers and make a snerflkuppie, the first one that ever existed, and give it actual substance and reality. Okay, metaphorically I did just make the first snerflkuppie… It is about three feet tall, has glossy purple fur and three legs. Four puppy-like eyes, a wide mouth, and no nose… I dare you not to try and picture it in your mind’s eye. But there isn’t one skipping about in this universe. I can only take known things and recombine them in unique and surprising ways. My novels are about kids doing kid stuff… you know, like time travel, being kidnapped by aliens, uncovering werewolf plots, and making magical cookie people. Stuff that really happened. And I am a former teacher, so I have experience knowing real kids.

Urkel

If you think kids you see depicted on television and in the movies are realistic, you have never played a video game with a real kid. You have never had them tell you what they are really afraid of. You have never come to the conclusion that they actually know a whole lot more about sex than you do. And kids are not afraid to try something new for the first time (unless, of course, the thing they are going to try is what their parents want them to try for the first time). You take liquid one and mix it with powder two, watch it fizz, and then drink it. You don’t know if it will taste good, turn you into a muscle-bound Mr. Hyde-type monster, or blow you up like a firecracker. But you made it yourself and you are going to try. We generally think of kids as being creative and undisciplined. We expect time and experience to take the unruliness, as well as the creativity, out of them. It is the thing we refer to as, “growing up”. But I think being creative is, to some degree, remaining a child. I am a child because I continue to hold play-time in high regard, and do it as often as I can. Writing words on paper, or on my laptop, is playing to me. Drawing pictures with pen and ink and colored pencils is also playing to me. Fortunately mixing chemicals from the cupboard like a mad scientist and testing them on my sister is no longer playing to me. (And that, Nancy, is just a joke… I never actually did that… I think… I hope…)

The metaphorical car chase of life… with an old dog behind the wheel.

So, there you have it. The ultimate answer. Where does creativity come from? I do not know.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, insight, metaphor, strange and wonderful ideas about life, writing humor

Tagged as creativity, goofiness, humor, old art

March 27, 2016 · 2:53 pm

Thinking Differently

Buckminster Fuller is an intellectual hero of mine. As he said in the video, if you bothered to watch it, “I was told I had to get a job and make money, but would you rather be making money, or making sense?” Bucky was always a little bit to the left of center, and basically in the farthest corner of the outfield. That’s why we depend so much on him in times like these when the ball is being hit to the warning track. (I know the world doesn’t really work on baseball metaphors any more, but my life has always been about metaphors from 1964 with the St. Louis Cardinals playing and beating the New York Yankees. Mantle was on their side, but Maris was playing for us.) You have to live in the world that fits into your own mental map of reality. And if you’ve been whacked on the side of the head one too many times… it changes the way you think. You begin to think differently.

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If you don’t know who Bucky is, as you probably don’t because he revolutionized the world in the 60’s and died in the 1980’s, Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. He is credited with the invention of the Geodesic Dome. But he was so much more than that. He wanted to build things that made better sense, in a practical sort of way, than the way we actually do them. He built geodesic homes because he felt a home should maximize space and use of materials and minimize costs and amounts of materials as well as environmental impacts. He is the one who popularized the notion of “Spaceship Earth”. He wrote and published more than thirty books, and gave us a variety of truly wise insights. He promoted the concept of synergy. He said, “Don’t fight forces, use them.” He also pointed out, “Ninety per cent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.” He was a man full of quotes useful for internet memes.

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So, lets consider an example from the mixed up mind of Mickey;

Here are three dolls from the Planet of the Apes part of my doll collection. (Two different movies are represented here, the 1968 original, and the Tim Burton 2001 remake.)

The world we now live in is increasingly like the movie, The Planet of the Apes. In that film the world the astronauts set down upon is ruled by talking apes. The human beings in that film are relegated to the fields and forests where they are no more than speechless animals. Much like the Republican Party and the wealthy ruling elite of this day and age, the apes control everything and, led by Dr. Zaius (seen on the far right) reject science and evidence as a way to explain things. They rely on the rules set down by the Lawgiver in much the same way that modern day Republicans swear by the U.S. Constitution to determine the truth of all things.

Here we see the apes capturing and enslaving Marky Mark… er… Mark Wahlberg rather than Chuck Heston from the original movie.

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In the original set of movies, Charleton Heston, playing the astronaut Taylor, discovers that through hatred and warring, the human beings of Earth have bombed themselves back into the stone age and enabled the evolved apes to take over. How does Mr. Heston deal with that problem? He discovers an old doomsday device and blows up the world. Chuck Heston has always approved Second Amendment solutions to modern problems, so it is no wonder that he lays waste to everything, the good and the bad. I think we can see that old orangutan-man, Donald Trump doing exactly the same things now as he runs for President, or Great Ape, or whatever…

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In both the previous series, and the current remake, salvation from the rule of the monkey people comes in the form of a leader among the apes. Caesar, whether he be played by Roddy MacDowell or by Andy Serkis, is able to solve the problems of apes and men by reaching out to those of the other species, assigning them value, and ultimately doing what helps everyone to survive and live together. Diversity is power and provides a workable solution through cooperation. The forces of hatred and fear are the things that must be overcome and threaten the existence of everyone. Donald Trump needs to learn from the lesson of The Planet of the Apes, and be less like General Ursus. We need Bernie Sanders to embrace the role of Caesar and show us how we can get along with our Muslim brothers… after all, they are more like us than the apes are, and Caesar builds bridges between apes and men.

So, there you have it, my attempt to build a new model based on an old movie… or on the remake… whichever you prefer. And if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always…

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Skyscape

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It is difficult to look at the sky and not feel that the power of Heaven is real. As I approach the halfway point of my sixtieth year, and the darkness of the future draws ever nearer, I am forced to think about what I really believe. Being smarter than the average bear has its drawbacks. I understand why most of the writers I most admire were atheists, and all of the philosophers I have read and found agreement with are decidedly atheist. Science, rationality, and reason all suggest that there is nothing beyond the physical realm. Should that matter? Faith, according to Mark Twain, is fervently believing in your heart what your mind tells you ain’t so. In fact, Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.” Even the Bible is saying you have to believe it even though you shouldn’t believe it.

So, will I go to Heaven when I die? For me, the question is meaningless. I look up at the miracle of a blue sky on a partly cloudy day and see the life-giving sun. I am alive… here and now… and nothing else is really relevant. I am a part of the great, vast universe of reality. My existence is real and cannot be unmade… even by God, if He were inclined to do such a thing. I am a small, insignificant part of reality, and I can be gone in the next instant like a puff of smoke in the wind. But I am here and I am alive and I took the Paffooney picture that I used to illustrate this post. And I face whatever comes with a smile on my face. I am alive… and life is good.

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Filed under insight, inspiration, philosophy, photo paffoonies, Uncategorized

Tagged as artwork, belief, clouds, Hebrews 11:1, philosophy, photo Paffooney, skyscapes

March 8, 2016 · 4:41 pm

The Beasts of Armeggedon

Today may very well be the last day on Earth. I laugh when I write that, but it could literally be true. There is an asteroid approaching the earth and it is supposed to pass within 11,000 miles of Earth. That is close enough for a minor math oops to fool us into not panicking about an extinction event. The Dallas Fort-Worth area is being soaked in thunderstorms and potential high winds as I write this in a house that has foundation cracks made worse by a high number of fracking-induced earthquakes the last couple of years. I woke up with chest pains this morning, and I have a family history of heart trouble. (Although the last time I panicked and had the chest pains checked it was apparently arthritis in my rib cage… and the weather does make my arthritis worse.) So, in very many ways, this really could be the last day. And as I reminded everybody yesterday, I am a pessimist in all things.

So, I am girding up in armor as a pessimist always does, preparing for the worst. If I am not going to be here tomorrow, then I need to prepare by counting my blessings today. Number one, I have completed a successful 31-year career as a teacher. I touched over 2,000 lives, made a difference in a lot of them, and screwed up only a handful of them. I taught some kids to read, and I taught a lot of kids to write. I was a good writing teacher. I know how to build a theme and I can teach others to do the same. I have lived a life of service, and though I have not been made money-rich by my efforts, I have wealth greater than Croesus (I know you don’t really know who that is, but I didn’t want that sentiment spoiled by using a name like Trump or the Walmart heirs.)

Senator Tedhkruzh, the lizard-man from the doomed planet Galtorr Prime.

Number two, I am a survivor who has seen an amazing amount of history roll past without ever being crushed under its wheels. I was alive for John Kennedy’s Presidency and assassination. I watched Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon. I taught the day the Challenger exploded with the first teacher in space on board. I also taught the day the twin towers fell on 9-11. I have seen how the world was changed, and I, like most people, experienced the changes necessary to adapting to a new world. As a pessimist, I am already planning for life under President Ted Cruz. It will be the worst possible outcome for our nation of the election of 2016. We really should not elect a Reptilian as our leader. But I survived the Ronny Ray-Gun revolution, and eight long years under the Cowboy of Very Little Brain, so if I live to see it, I will adapt. And so will you. We have only rarely ever been truly free and prosperous, but in our minds, no one, no matter how tyrannical, can ever truly deprive us of our freedom.

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So, if these are the last words I ever write, then know that I am at peace with the world. If the big space rock does us all in today, then at least we have to consolation that humankind has had its chance to live and love and laugh, and we didn’t do everything wrong.

The Cowboy Code

When I was a boy playing cowboys and Indians with cap pistols and rubber tomahawks, we all knew that cowboys had a code. The guy in the white hat always shoots straight. He knows right from wrong. He only shoots the bad guy. He even shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand if he can. Westerns are about right and wrong, good and bad, and the unyieldingly good knights of plains.

And boys believe what they see on TV and in the movie theaters. People who make television shows never lie, do they? In fact, Wyatt Earp was based on a real guy who really lived and really shot the bad guys at the gosh-darn real OK Corral.

Daniel Boone was a real guy too. He faced the opening up of new lands full of deadly dangers. And when Fess Parker played him in 1964, wearing Davy Crockett’s coonskin hat, he walked the earth like a guardian angel, making everyone safe by the end of the episode. He even knew which Indians were good and which were bad. Mingo was always on Daniel’s side. And when they spoke to each other about the dangers they faced, it was never about killing the people they feared. It was about doing what is was right, about helping the community at Boonesboro to survive. Being encouraging… looking forward to a more settled future created by following the cowboy frontier code.

So, I am left wondering what ever happened to the cowboy code? I listen to Republican presidential candidates talking about dipping bullets in pig’s blood to kill Muslims, and building walls against Mexican immigrants, and why our right to carry assault rifles is sacred, and I wonder what happened. Didn’t they experience the same education from the television versions of the Great American Mythology? Didn’t they learn the code too?

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I am old enough now to know that cap guns are not real guns and you cannot solve problems by shooting somebody. But that was never the point of the cowboy code. We need straight-shooters again in our lives, not to shoot people, but to tell the unvarnished truth. We need wise people who can tell who are the good Indians and who are the bad We need them to shoot the weapons out of the bad guys’ hands. And I know that’s asking for leaders to be larger than life and be more perfect than a man can actually be. But Daniel Boone was a real man. Myths and legends start with a fundamental truth.

Exploring the Mind of Mickey

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One really weird thing that teachers do is think about thinking. I mean, how can a person actually teach someone else how to think and how to learn if they don’t themselves understand the underlying processes? Now that I have retired from teaching and spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would try thinking about thinking one more time at least. Hey, just because I am retired, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do some of the weird things I used to do as a teacher, right?

This time I made a map to aid me in my quest to follow the twists and turns of how Mickey thinks and how Mickey learns. Don’t worry, though. I didn’t actually cut Mickey’s head in half to be able to make this map. I used the magical tool of imagination. Some folks might call it story-telling… or bald-face lying.

Now, a brain surgeon would be concerned that my brain maps out in boxes. He would identify it as a seriously deformed brain. It is not supposed to be all rectangular spaces and stairs. It probably indicates a severe medical need for corrective surgery… or possibly complete amputation. But we are not going to concern ourselves with trying to save Mickey from himself right now. That is far too complex a topic to tackle in a 500-word daily post. We are just discussing the basics of operation.

You see the three little guys in the control room? They are an indication that not only did I steal an idea from the Disney/Pixar Movie Inside Out, but I apparently have too few guys doing the job up there compared to the movie version. (It probably makes sense though that a young girl like the one in the movie has a much more sensible configuration in her brain than someone who was a middle school teacher for 24 years. Seriously, that job can do a bit of damage.) The three little guys are not actually Moe, Curly, and Larry, though that wouldn’t be far from descriptive accuracy. They are Impulsive Ignatz, currently in the driver’s seat (or else I wouldn’t be writing this), Proper Percy the Planner, and Pompositous Felixian Checkerbob, the fact-checker and perfectionist (also labeled the inner nerd… I am told not everyone has one of these). They are the three little guys that run around in frantic circles in my head trying to deal with a constant flow of input and output, trying to make sense of everything, and routinely failing miserably.

I shouldn’t forget the other two little guys in my head, Sleepytime Tim in the Dream Center, and little Batty up in the attic. I have no earthly idea how either of them function, or what in the heck they are supposed to do. But there they are. The other three run up and down stairs all day, locating magic mushrooms and random knowledge in the many file cabinets, record collections, book stacks, and odd greasy containers that are stored all around in the many nooks and crannies of Mickey’s mind. They collect stuff through the eyes and ears, and it is also their responsibility to chuck things out through the stupidity broadcaster at various inopportune times. It is also a good idea for them to avoid the lizard brain of the limbic system in the basement. It is easily angered and might eat them.

So now you should be able to fully understand how Mickey thinks. (Or not… a qualifier I was forced to put in by Checkerbob.)

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Filed under humor, insight, mental health, Paffooney, Uncategorized

Tagged as cartoons, goofiness, humor, idea maps, mental maps, Metacognition, thinking about thinking

January 23, 2016 · 8:53 pm

Dumb Luck

Sometimes life is just a flip of the coin. Heads for the good things. Tails for the bad. But because of the nature of random chance, even though the opportunities for good luck or bad luck are equal, tails twenty-seven times in a row can happen. Before my book is able to be published, my publisher is on the brink of shutting down. Their own roll of the dice has come up snake-eyes a few too many times. I and the other authors at PDMI are trying to rally around each other and do what we can to help. But the business is, for the moment, on hold. Good things can happen too, though. My novel, Magical Miss Morgan, is still in the running for the Rossetti Award from Chanticleer Book Reviews. That might turn out to be a real good heads up and help me with my publication goals. My blogging is going well. For some reason I seem to be scoring 60+ views on a single day at least one day a week for the last six weeks. I am now averaging 30 views a day instead of the old rate of 20. My blogging is being read by more actual readers than ever before. That’s a good thing, but also the result of dumb luck. There is no formula for success making it happen. I have to keep trying and trust that sometimes things will accidentally happen in my favor. I admit to being a little tired of things that accidentally cause me harm. Do I believe that God has a plan, and things work out the way they should? Of course I do. But I am not vain enough to think that I am important enough to the over-all plan to effect even a single flip of the coin of fate.

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Filed under cartoons, humor, insight, Paffooney

Tagged as artwork, dumb luck, humor, novel writing, paffooney, publishing, random chance