Tag Archives: philosophy

September 5, 2022 · 4:05 pm

Weirdie Poetry

The Man Who Had Bird Knees

I once knew a man…

Who had knees…

That bent backwards, like a bird’s…

And this man…

Could only walk…

Like a limping, lame old duck.

The children all laughed…

And pointed at him…

When he passed them in the park…

And it made him smile…

And laugh to himself…

That his handicap made them happy.

Every single night…

He oiled his weary knees…

And tried to fight the pain…

And every single day…

He used his silly legs…

To do the Chicken Dance for kids.

And then there came a day…

When the bird legs came no more…

To be noticed by kids at the park…

And the parents all learned…

That the poor man had died…

And the whole world brought him flowers.

The next day in Heaven…

St. Peter saw a man…

Whose knees bent backwards like a bird’s…

And all of Heaven laughed…

As he did the Chicken Dance…

While angels clapped in Heaven.

The thing I find to be most witlessly true about both poetry and life is that things can be funny, and make you laugh, and at the same time make you cry on the inside. Humor is hard to write because it can be both happy and sad at the same exact moment. How do you define that quality? The bitter-sweet nature of nature? That’s saying it in a way that is both contradictory and odd. It can give you a wry smile at the same moment it both confounds and confuses you. So better just to shrug your shoulders and tell yourself you know it when you see it… and this either is or isn’t it. Sorry if I made you think too hard, cause I know that sometimes thinking hurts.

Mickey at the Wishing Well of Souls

I found a country well, and I thought I had a quarter,

But I fished in pockets hard, and found nothing for the warter,

And since I had to warp a line to make the poem rhyme,

I figured I would just look in, because I had the time.

I looked into the warty water which sat there still and deep,

And could not see the bottom, and I began to weep.

The water was clear and dark and black,

And the only thing I saw… was Mickey looking back.

And nothing of the wishing well, its magic could I see,

For only there just staring back, the secret thing was me.

I apologize for inflicting poetry on you when you probably came here looking for goofy stuff to laugh at. But my poetry is just like all my word-mangling and picture-crayoning. It tends to be goofy and weird and walking a tightrope over a shark tank between chuckle-inducing and tear-jerking. You probably can’t even tell which is the poetry and which are the burbled brain-farts of commentary that pad this thing out to five hundred words. Four hundred and ninety six, actually.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, poetry

Tagged as autobiography, bird knees, goofiness, humor, misspelled words, Paffoonies, philosophy, poetry, self-reflection, warped ideas, writing humor

August 26, 2022 · 2:29 am

Irreverence

1545915_857586730920494_4347423707615507803_n

It is a difficult thing to be an atheist who believes in God. Sometimes it takes an oxymoron to find the Truth. And you often have to go heavily on the “moron” portion of the word.

The thing I find most distressing about faith is the fact that those who have it are absolutely convinced that if you don’t agree with them and whatever book of fairy tales they believe in and interpret for you, then you are not a True Believer and you do not have real Faith.

7109_o_william_adolphe_bouguereau

I remember being told by a Mormon girl in one of my classes that I was her all-time favorite teacher, but she was deeply distressed that, because of my religion (I professed to be a Jehovah’s Witness at the time) I was doomed to burn in Hell forever.

Hey, I was raised in Iowa. I have experienced minus 100 degree Fahrenheit windchill. I am among those who think a nice warm afterlife wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

But I am no longer actually a Jehovah’s Witness. So I guess that helps with the whole Hell-burning thing. The Witnesses are a religion that claims to understand the Bible is full of metaphorical truth, and yet insist that it is literally true. They don’t believe in Hell, which, honestly, is not actually mentioned or explained in the Bible as we have it now. But they do believe your prospects for eternal life on a paradise Earth are totally contingent on knocking on doors and telling other people that they must believe what you believe or experience eternal destruction. I have stopped being an active Witness and knocking on doors because I got old and sick, and all the caring brothers and sisters in the congregation stopped coming around to visit because number one son joined the Marines, and the military is somehow evil hoodoo that cancels out any good you have done in the past. Being a Jehovah’s Witness was really hard work with all the meetings (5 per week), Bible reading (I have read the entire Bible two and a half times), door-knocking, and praying, and you apparently can lose it all for saying, thinking, or doing one wrong thing.

love-on-the-look-out-by-bouguereau-adorable-amazing-angel-angels-awesome-beautiful-480x320

According to the Baptist preachers, Jehovah’s Witness elders, religious zealots, and other opinionated religious people I have known and dealt with in my life, if I do not believe what they believe and agree with them in every detail, then I do not know God and am therefore an atheist. So, okay, I guess I am. If I have to be an atheist to believe whole-heartedly that everyone is entitled to sincerely believe whatever the hell they want to believe, then I’ll wear that label.

On a personal note, my favorite verse of the Bible has always been 1 John 4:8, “He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.” That is why I claim to be an atheist who believes in God. I know love. I love all men, women, children, animals, sunrises, artwork, paintings of angels by Bouguereau… everything that is. And I even love you if you exercise your freedom to tell me, “Your ideas are totally wrong, and you are going to burn in Hell, Mickey, you bad guy, you!” Mark Twain always said, “I would choose Heaven for climate, but I would prefer Hell for company.” I am not going to worry about it. I will be in good company. Some things are just bigger than me. And trying to control things like that is nonsense. Sorta like this post.

Leave a comment

Filed under artists I admire, artwork, autobiography, finding love, foolishness, humor, philosophy, religion, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as philosophy, religion

May 31, 2022 · 4:05 pm

Notes From the Archangel Michael

I was born and raised a Methodist. But I married into the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Yes, those annoying little people who come knocking at your door offering free Bible studies and wanting to talk to you about the “good news from God’s Word the Bible”. I was one of them for the better part of 20 years. And I want to tell you from the outset that I have been guilty of knocking on doors. I have been threatened to have the dogs sicked on me. I have been threatened with guns by Winchuks, Hickenloopers, and other rednecks. Laughingboy Larry, a seventh and eighth grade former student of mine even begged me to come to his door so he could throw a pie in my face. I requested lemon meringue pie because… mmm, lemon meringue! Jehovah’s Witnesses are not bad people. They are real honest-to-God Christians who believe and teach the essential lessons of Christianity, Love and Forgiveness. Some of the finest people I have ever met are self-sacrificing, hard-working Jehovah’s Witnesses. I would never speak against them. But this post has to explain why I no longer am one of them.

20151204_131433

I have always been a reader of the Bible. I began seriously reading it in my youth when I was a victim of sexual assault and the life-threatening depression that can cause. A very thoughtful and loving Methodist minister, the father of my best friend, taught me how to use the Bible to seek answers and find comfort. As a Jehovah’s Witness, I have read the entire Bible cover to cover twice.

But I have also always been a Christian Existentialist, even before I knew what that was. I believe that existence precedes essence. There has to be a real, observable rock in front of me before I grant faith in the existence of a rock. I don’t accept “rock-ness” as something that is real because other people tell me that “rock” exists. If God is going to be the rock upon which I build my faith, then I have to observe that God is real. I need proof. Superstition is acceptance of something without proof. As far as I can tell, almost all religions… organized religions… are based on superstitions. “How do you know that Jesus loves me?” “Because the Bible tells me so.” “Why must I believe I go to Heaven when I die?” “Because your father and his father before him believed it.” “Can I accept these as real reasons… as evidence?” “Of course not. These things follow the patterns of superstition.”

“Kill the infidel! Die a hero’s death, and you will be granted 99 virgins in paradise.” “How do you know this to be true?” “Allah has told me in a dream.”

250px-St._Uriel-_St_John’s_Church,_Boreham

So, if you follow any of this (undoubtedly due to the same curse of relentless intelligence that plagues me), you are probably wondering why I don’t just come out and claim to be an atheist like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens? Well, because I believe in God. I have seen the proof. When I talk to God, he answers me. When I ask him to guide me, he sends signs and leads me to the answers I seek. He comforts me, even though it is only by helping me to find comfort in my own mind… my own self. He helps me find the power within me to do what is right and overcome what is wrong. Why, then, am I not still a Jehovah’s Witness? Why am I not still knocking on doors?

The truth, as I see it, is… each of us must find God for ourselves. Each of us must obtain the certainty we seek with our own efforts, or be satisfied with a perpetual state of not knowing all the answers. Either result is perfectly acceptable. Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you that you can’t obtain eternal life unless you believe what they believe, do what they do, and accept everything just as they interpret it from their magic book. Personally, I believe there is no eternal life. I am made of star stuff (as Carl Sagan used to say, because science has mathematically proven it is true). When I die, the configuration of star stuff that is me will simply be no more. But I have existed. And my atoms will go through a large number of processes that disperse them and turn them into something else. My individual consciousness will be disbanded, but the overall consciousness of the universe will remain. The universe is greater than I am. In fact, the whole human race could wink out of existence in a massive fireball that consumes planet Earth, and the whole still remains. I don’t have to worry about any of it. I am the author of my own story. I am responsible for its content, both good and bad. And I am not sorry for any of it.

Most of the angels used in this post are by William-Adolphe Bouguereau…and one is by me.

Now you know the awful truth. Mickey is a humanist. He thinks for himself about everything… even matters of religion. How horrible!

“Tell me, oh great and powerful, Vishnu, will I be offered 99 virgins in paradise if I kill him for you?”

“No, Singh-Rama O’Malley. You are simply being stupid and superstitious. And besides, that particular superstition doesn’t belong to my religion. You are mixing things up.”

“Oh, sorry, Lord Vishnu. But is it okay if I don’t kill myself for my error?”

“Singh-Rama, you are a child of the universe… no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding… as it should.” (Note; These last words are the words of the poet Max Ehrmann in his wise poem, Desiderata.)

Leave a comment

Filed under philosophy, Uncategorized

Tagged as angels, belief, Christianity, humor, Jehovah's Witnesses, philosophy, religion, superstition

May 4, 2022 · 4:28 pm

Writing with Power

Troubled hearts can be soothed with words. In 1Samuel 16:23 David plays the harp and his singing was a relief for Saul and the bad spirit departed from upon him. In the same way, the written word can touch the soul of the reader and, like Saul, free the reader from the demons besetting him. That is power. That is responsibility.

Of course, I am the last person to claim that I can teach you to write with power… I can’t even claim that I can write with power myself. But I know how to write well enough to make myself laugh, cry, and feel through my writing. And occasionally someone else reads my writing and agrees. Through years worth of being a writing teacher, I do have some thoughts about how it may be done.

First of all, I am not wrong to choose David’s harp playing, inspired by Jehovah as it was, as a metaphor for writing power. It is in the very sounds of the words that a great deal of emotion and meaning is embedded. One can evoke a very bitter and angry feeling by describing a cruel woman not as a “mean girl” but as one whose laughter is “like the crass cackling of devious old witch”. Mean girl has too soft a labial sound, even with the hard g, to be as ugly and staccato as the repeated k sounds added to the tch and the fact that “devious” comes so close to “devil”… a related word. A happy feeling can be created by describing a smile as “a sudden sunburst of white teeth and happiness”. That almost makes me laugh…unless you add “shark’s” between “white” and “teeth”… and then I am convinced I am about to be eaten. The s sounds in the description are like a sizzling burn that leads into the firework display at the end of the word “sunburst”. To write with the music inherent in words, at some point you have to hear it out loud. I always hear the words in my head when I write, spoken in a wide variety of voices. But to truly get it right, I have to read aloud to hear with my ears… which I have already done three times to this paragraph alone.

In order to have power, writing must manipulate feelings. I don’t mean by using the word “manipulate” that it is some sort of Machiavellian bad thing. Simply put, a writer must control the feelings of the reader, not by sound alone, but by the depth of meaning of the words. You must be able to weave a paragraph together not only with the simple meanings of the words themselves, but all the connotations and denotations in those words. You must use metaphor and simile, comparison, allusion, and sensory details. Ernest Hemingway had a working style almost completely devoid of metaphor and the writer’s own personal commentary… but that only worked because all his themes were about dispirited people suffering tragedy and loss and a pervasive sense of disconnectedness. Hemingway is a powerful writer… but his books never make me laugh. Purple prosey over-describers like Charles Dickens can make me laugh with a simple list of things. “The boy’s desk had a nearly dry ink bottle, several pens that needed new nibs and were chewed about the grip, and a small stack of papers crammed full of ink drawings of skulls and skeletons.” It is that last startling detail in the list that makes the mundane suddenly funny.

I suppose to do today’s topic true justice, I should write about it in book length. There is so much more to say. But I have bored you long enough for one post with writing nuts and bolts. It is enough to say that I believe in the magic of words, and I think that if, like any good Dungeons and Dragons wizard, you study your books of magic long enough, you can soon be casting fireballs around the room made up of nothing but words.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, writing, writing teacher

Tagged as advice, David and Solomon, goofiness, humor, magic words, nuts and bolts, paffooney, philosophy, writing, writing teacher

March 21, 2022 · 2:06 pm

Irreverence

1545915_857586730920494_4347423707615507803_n

It is a difficult thing to be an atheist who believes in God. Sometimes it takes an oxymoron to find the Truth. And you often have to go heavily on the “moron” portion of the word.

7109_o_william_adolphe_bouguereau

Hey, I was raised in Iowa. I have experienced minus 100 degree Fahrenheit windchill. I am among those who think a nice warm afterlife wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

love-on-the-look-out-by-bouguereau-adorable-amazing-angel-angels-awesome-beautiful-480x320

Leave a comment

Filed under artists I admire, artwork, autobiography, finding love, foolishness, humor, philosophy, religion, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as philosophy, religion

March 7, 2022 · 2:43 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.

1101640110_400

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.

483069_10151392953105155_924133154_n

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.

20160108_083452

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…

article-1376448-006309D800000258-237_468x398

rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-2011-movie-image-2-planet-of-the-apes-3-gets-a-july-2017-release-date-jpeg-283664

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…

936546_1014720455251058_1400577917712937504_n

Leave a comment

Filed under doll collecting, humor, insight, inspiration, metaphor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Uncategorized

Tagged as Buckminster Fuller, Bucky, doll collecting, humor, innovation, metaphor, philosophy, Planet of the Apes

February 11, 2022 · 2:49 pm

Banned Breakfast-Table Talking

At Mother’s breakfast table we were always encouraged to talk about stuff. That was a given. It was how families operated in the 60’s and 70’s. Mom and Dad not only listened to the mindless drivel coming out of the childish mouths of me, my two sisters, and my stinky little brother, but they also tended to hold forth about things they wished to teach us. We learned Methodist-Church-flavored Christianity and Eisenhower-Republican values. Ike had been president when I was born and got most of the credit for the post-war boom in the economy. We were middle-class people with solid middle-class values.

And then I had the bad sense to grow up and start thinking for myself. Nixon had let me down big-time when I was in high school. I had defended him against my McGovern-leaning loony liberal friends. My best friend was a preacher’s kid, a Methodist preacher’s kid. His father actually believed in progressive nonsense about sex-education for children and helping to feed the poor. And then Nixon turned out to be a liar, a coverer-upper, a cheat, and a bad-word-user. I suspect, though my Dad never admitted it, that he may have voted for Carter over Ford. It was my first time voting, and it actually felt good to use my vote to strike back at the party that betrayed my trust.

Religion, too. In the late seventies a man named Carl Sagan put on a TV show called Cosmos. The man bedazzled my father and I with Science. He taught us that every molecule of us was composed of atoms that could only have been forged in the cosmic furnaces in the centers of stars. He showed us how spectroscopy of the stars could show us what they were made of. He showed us the meaning of Einstein’s special Theory of Relativity. He pulled the universe together for us in a way that could not be undone. And he did it without calling upon the name and blessings of God. But he pointed out that we are connected to everything in the universe and everything is connected to us. To me, that seemed to define God. My religion was changing from Christianity to Saganism. Of course, Mom heard that as “paganism”. Breakfast table talking changed into early morning arguments. We didn’t exactly throw chairs at each other, but some pretty heated and pretty large ideas went flying through the air. Religion and politics became the banned topics at the breakfast table.

So that brings me to the Paffooney points for today. This blog has turned into a place where a disobedient son, a horrible sort of “free-thinker” type of radical hippie pinko goofball, can talk about the loony-liberal progressive ideas that have taken over his good-little Eisenhower-Republican little-boy mind. I spent the last post talking existentially about my religious beliefs. My conservative, old-fashioned friends and family call me an atheist now, but I truly believe in God. It’s just, I recognize the factors behind Christian myths. I bow to the wisdom of Scientists like Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking… as well as hippie psychologists like Alan Watts… and literary heroes like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S, Lewis.

I am proud to be an Iowegian (a Mickian word for being from Iowa), yet my birth-State produces gawd-awful Tea Party politicians like Steve King and Joni Ernst. The stuff that comes out of their mouths doesn’t even make good fertilizer. But they are comedy gold. Will Rogers would have pointed out that the jokes will write themselves. All the humorist would have to do is consult the front page of the newspaper. I also live in Texas where the debate over secession from the United States still goes on with new Governor Greg Abbott, a man who is a Rick Perry clone, except that he hasn’t bothered to put on glasses as much to make him smarter. And Texans are looking forward to the next Republican president in 2016. Both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are running. That doubles Texas’ chances, right? With Global Warming not being accepted as a real thing, the need for giving all our money to the Koch brothers and the Walton family being recognized by both parties in Congress, and looming war with foreign nations that have the bad sense to be “Muslim in nature”, the future looks kinda bleak. But it is a great time to be a humorist, and I am guessing I won’t be doing very much talking at the breakfast table for a while.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, politics, religion

Tagged as goofiness, humor, paffooney, philosophy, politics, religion, satire

February 10, 2022 · 2:20 pm

Allegro Non Troppo

Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain from Disney’s Fantasia

The old faun

In musical terms, Allegro Non Troppo means fast tempo, but not too fast. So, I recently discovered that Allegro Non Troppo is one of many rare and obscure old movies which I am passionate about that can be found in its entirety on YouTube. I will include the YouTube link to a portion of it at the end of this post, and I sincerely recommend that if you have never seen this movie, you watch the whole thing at least once. No matter how many cringes or winces or blushes it causes, this is a movie of many bizarre parts that you really need to take in as a whole. It ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime, the atrociously ugly to the lyrically beautiful, from the brilliant classical score being played by a mistreated band of old ladies with orchestral instruments to a gorilla running amok, from Debussy to Ravel, from an artist released from his cage to single-handedly draw the animation, to a satire rich with baudy humor making fun of no less a work of animation than Prisney’s.. I mean Disney’s Fantasia. The dark elements are there. The light-hearted, lilting comedy is there. The fairy tale delicacy and technicolor dreaming is all there.

And why should this be important to me? Especially now that I am retired from a long and fruitful teaching career? Well, I have history with this movie. I saw it first in college. I was an English major, but I took every film as literature class I could fit into my silly schedule. As an undergrad, I was determined to be a cartoonist for a career. I took classes seriously and aced most of them, but I was at college to intellectually play around. I didn’t take the prescribed courses to be an English teacher. That had to wait for the more responsible me to come along in grad school for that. I saw both Fantasia and Allegro Non Troppo during one of the play-time years. Much as the old satyr in Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, I was enamored with sensory experience. I took my first girlfriend to see Disney’s Fantasia, and she later turned down the opportunity to see Allegro Non Troppo with me. Good sense on her part, but the beginning of the end of our relationship. Just as Fantasia has the part in it where Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring describes evolution from the beginning of the Earth to the end of the dinosaurs, Allegro Non Troppo uses Ravel’s Bolero to describe the evolution of life on a weird planet from germs in a discarded Coke bottle to the inevitable coming of the malevolent monkey who is ultimately us. And, of course, the satire would not be complete without some off-set for Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. As near as I can figure it out, the apprentice, played by Mickey Mouse, becomes the snake from the Garden of Eden in Allegro Non Troppo. When the snake is unable to get Adam and Eve to eat the apple, he makes the mistake of eating the apple himself. He learns the hard way that, no matter how clever, even diabolically clever, you think you are, you are not really in control of anything in life. Every would-be wizard in the world has to understand that he is powerless without hard experience. And what a boring world full of naked people this would be if there were never any apprentices in it foolish enough to actually become wizards. Of course, I haven’t really talked about the most heart-twisting part of Allegro Non Troppo… the sad cat wandering the ruins of his former home, or the most laugh-aloud part with the super-tidy little lady-bee trying to eat a blossom, but being interrupted by a couple of picnickers.

But the thing is, this movie is a timely subject for me. Not only did I, just yesterday, rediscover it, but it still has the same meaning for me now as it did when I first saw it. Then I was an aspiring young artist who loved this movie because it approached ideas non-consecutively, just as I approached my learning years… rambling here and there, finding first a bitter-sweet something, and then a sad beauty behind everything in life. And it is where I am again now, in a poor-health enforced retirement… divorced from teacher’s schedules and time itself. Able to do as I please, and aspiring once again to commit great acts of art.

2 Comments

Filed under movie review, philosophy

Tagged as animation, art criticism, autobiography, cartoons, movie review, movies I love, old movies, philosophy

February 7, 2022 · 2:30 pm

People All Have Worth

I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head. And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome. But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what. That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be. It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer. The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.

But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful. Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen. There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward. And people are not born evil. The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another. As a teacher you get to know every type that there is. And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!) Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica. But the Doctor is right. No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful!

So let me show you a few old drawings of people.

Cute people like Andrew here.

Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.

Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.

Or young people who live and learn and hopefully love…

And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.

And hope and dream and play and laugh…

And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…

And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…

Because God made them all for a reason…

even if we will never find out what that reason is.

Leave a comment

Filed under art my Grandpa loved, humor, Paffooney, philosophy

Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, humor, irony, love, Paffoonies, philosophy, teaching, wish-upon-a-starring

January 19, 2022 · 3:03 pm

My School-Teacher Soapbox

It has been more than a semester now that I have not been a teacher. I am missing it mightily. I even miss the yelling and screaming, the name-calling and the crazy-eyed threats against life and limb. And that’s just me. I miss what the kids always did too. This was driven home to me as I tried to move my middle child from one school to another. We were hoping to get a bit of a break on his placement. He is a gifted child with a penchant for bizarre and long-lasting obsessions. He has a talent for building huge, monumental structures in Minecraft. He is very computer-nerd and history-wonk. (Yes, I know those are not pure predicate adjectives, but I am a retired English teacher and just don’t care any more.) I was hoping they could overlook his burnout/blowout eighth-grade brain meltdown from the previous year and give him the chance to be a ninth grader for at least half a year. No. Arbitrary rules must be obeyed. (That isn’t even how she said it. More like, arbitrary rules MUST be obeyed). That meant of course that he has to continue to repeat the mindless indoctrination of year number 9, (eight numbered grades plus K), (And Pre-K, come to think of it.) Make that year number 10. No high school yet, though he is more than mature enough, intelligent enough, motivated enough, and sweet-natured enough. We are not loving and forgiving people. We are strict and by-the-book people! Forgive me, Lord. I am writing my own book. (In more ways than one.)

This is what we are doing wrong in Education;

1. We are putting people in boxes. (Little people. Kids mostly. We are calling those boxes things like ADHD, Special Education, trouble-maker, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, disobedient, truant, and “in need of alternative education”… here meaning kid-prison.)

2. We are sealing those boxes with heavy-duty red tape. (Read special or remedial classes as waste-baskets for keeping the rabble and the riff-raff out of the good teachers’ hair.)

3. We are routinely handing those boxes to the box-bangers and package manglers. (The semi-incompetent teachers who have discipline problems because in teacher college nobody tells you what to do with the kid who sits in the corner and sings to himself instead of paying attention, or the girl who gets out of her seat every time the teacher turns his back to go flitting around the room like a bumble bee going flower to flower (except that it is a more hormonal attraction and goes boy to boy); or the competent teacher like me who incurs the principal’s disfavor for having classes that always make noise and are given such classes in boxes as a punishment because that kind of principal is too limited in intelligence to understand that those kinds of boxes are not really a punishment if you merely take a moment to examine the treasures they contain.)

4. We keep the boxes air-tight so that no oxygen or light gets in. (To suffocate learners under piles of worksheets and endless drill and practice is murder. We are killing the precious learners with boring stuff and teaching them to be zombies who all act alike and hate learning because their brains are rotted masses of goo.)

This is what we must do instead;

1. Open the boxes up again and thoroughly mix the contents. (The rich suburban parents will resent the heck out of having their precious honors student sitting in class next to the poor black kid from the projects, but studies show that both kinds of learners do better when they are mixed together.)

2. Notice, we don’t need two any more, because learners are already distributed to different and diverse boxes based on what they individually need and want to learn about and have talent for. Groups should be more like the Shakespeare-loving group or the talkative-socializing group or the Tinker-toy builders group or the vampire-literature-writing group and less like groups of kids all the same color or all the same culture or all the same age.

3. All the teachers need to be trained to handle all the possible… no, make that probable problems that may come up in the classroom. Every classroom needs a proven veteran teacher and an enthusiastic young apprentice teacher. Neither one should have to face the evil hordes alone. And most important of all, any teacher who doesn’t love working with kids (and doesn’t love the kids in a way that will not lead to a prison term) needs be utilized in some way other than as a classroom teacher.

4. Every classroom is a laboratory and every teacher is a creative and daring mad-scientist-type intent on trying new things and only re-doing things that really work well. Forget this nonsense about standard curriculum goals and common core curriculum. Those are only buzz words for suffocating learners and being too lazy to think on your feet in the middle of the every-day classroom battle in the on-going War on Ignorance.

Now you see… I have all the answers and I know everything. The only mystery is… why don’t more people listen to me?

3 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as educational ranting, humor, paffooney, pencil drawing, philosophy, Sir Ken Robinson, teaching, wizard words

Tag Archives: philosophy

Weirdie Poetry

Irreverence

Notes From the Archangel Michael

Writing with Power

Irreverence

Thinking Differently

Banned Breakfast-Table Talking

Allegro Non Troppo

People All Have Worth

My School-Teacher Soapbox

Catch a Falling Star FB Page

Recent Posts

Stars We’ve Caught

Catch a Falling Star

Follow Blog via Email

Categories

Meta