March 30, 2006

Hi. I thought I'd try this, at least until some fool uses my info. to steal my identity. Although I've got to wonder, just who would want to be me? (Ok, I mean "really" be me!) I've not had an easy life and surely don't have much money to show for 31 years of teaching. Now I'm newly retired from my 60 hour work weeks teaching English. I barbecued my briefcase after I finished my last day at school. (see photo) Don't misinterpret this: I loved teaching and the kids. I loathed the long grading sessions I endured for way too many years. Time to try something new! Time to reinvent ME!

Entry for July 08, 2006 -Global Warming

Today's newspaper contained an editorial by John Stossel, "Scientists Use Scare Tactics to Get Money." (July 8, 2006) He offers VERY little proof of his thesis and uses sentences like "...melting Arctic ice won't raise sea levels any more than the melting ice in your drink makes your glass overflow." He basiclly claims scientists are overstating facts, twisting data, to produce increased funding for their projects regarding global warming. Just two weeks ago articles appeared in all the major publications saying MOST scientists now agree that global warming IS taking place, the oceans are rising as glaciers melt, we can expect more violent storms and increasing wildfires as a result of the now obvious warming taking place. Did Stossel forget that glaciers are not icebergs? Icebergs sit IN the water (like an ice cube in a glass)- but (melting) glaciers do not. They reside on land, can be miles wide, miles deep, and miles long, and those suckers are melting at unpresentated rates, in many cases disappearing for the first time in thousands of years. Huge chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island in Antarctica are breaking off and not reforming. Greenland's ice sheet that covers most of the island continent is disappearing fast.
Guess where all that water is going! Yep, our oceans will rise. The question is: Just how far will water levels go up? Most areas can tolerate an inch or two, but much more than that will have deleterious effects as presented in Al Gore's movie- "An Inconvenient Truth", and we will lose major cities, etc. My house sits sixteen feet above the ocean's level. Am I worried? It may not happen in my lifetime, but who wants to lose a legacy they want to hand down to a child?
The awful truth is we do not yet have the scientific ability to accurately predict just HOW hot we will get, HOW much glacial melt to expect, and HOW much destruction we can realistically expect from the increase in the oceans' water levels. This is all new territory for science.
Looking for a career that might make a difference to mankind? Choose environmental science, or some related field. Help us understand our world better and to come up with solutions to our ever increasing problems with managing it.
Most industrialized countries are now reporting populations in decline as fewer and fewer babies are being born, (except the U.S. whose population is expected to stay fairly constant.) Who knows? This reduction in global population might offset some of the pollution we are experiencing that is causing the world to warm. The cure might be taking place right now and we're unaware of it. Less people equals less pollution, plain and simple. Granted it is possible for pictures to lie, but it is harder. Type in "Antarctic melting" into Google, but make sure you click the option for Google images. Look at what is going on right now. "The sky is falling" in the form of melting glaciers

Time to Put Together a Hurricane Kit -July 18, 2006

I'm writing this mostly for my few friends and family, in hopes they will be prepared for the troubles ahead. No "Chicken Little" here. These events are most likely to happen.... and happen soon. What's $100 to $200 -if it means being prepared for your very survival? And IF these events do not happen, you'll have some extra food to eat and camping gear to utilize. In other words, you'll have little to lose IF you prepare now. If you choose to do nothing, well, the least to expect is extreme discomfort. The worst would be death.
OK, guys, it's hurricane season, and we WILL probably get hit - either T.J. in FLA, or Diane and Tate on The Outer Banks, or myself here in New Bern, NC. Hell, at this rate, even Brian in Maine had better pay attention. Global warming is fueling bigger hurricanes. It might not have the power of a Katrina, but when 4 to 6 "major hurricanes" are predicted to hit the US this season, we'd better pay attention.
And I am not just worried about the weather. We only have a matter of a short time before avian flu hits. The scientists say it will definately occur. There is no IF...it's a question of WHEN, this year or next. Think of the Spanish flu that killed 19 million worldwide in 1910. This will probably be at least that bad. Do some online research, as I have done, and you'll agree that we each need to start getting ready for the oncoming avian flu. We're talking about staying IN OUR HOMES for at least 3 weeks, and lots of reliable sources are saying to be ready for at least 3 MONTHS! Worst case scenario is a couple years, with the resulting lack of food, medicine, etc. Those folks ARE perchance too alarmist with their talk of buying lots of planting seeds, good bicycles, etc. and being prepared for defending your home from hungry intruders for a period of a year or two! That's the "Mad Max" scenario.
Now I'm going out on a limb: I PREDICT the problems currently occuring between Israel and Lebanon will soon be FAR larger than a local war. Lebanon is a shell of a country with no real government of its own, and is overrun with Hizbullah terrorists supported entirely by Syria and Iran. Their goal is the total downfall of Israel and the return of all Palestenian lands. The Hizbollah terrorists that kidnapped the Israeli soldiers were taunting the Israeli army, knowing how they would respond. They want a larger war! So Israel responded with attacking as many Hizbollah headquarters and related sites as they could. The problem is that Hizbolla is CONTROLLED MOSTLY BY IRAN (and to a lesser extent Syria). You get the picture? To really stop Hizbolla, Israel HAS to go after Iran. Now we have a regional war. The US will gladly get sucked into this one, considering our current administration's stance on Iran. I'm not claiming this war will be of Biblical proportions, but it could quickly get nasty: Moslem vs. Christian! We don't want it to happen, but THEY obviously do.
(Added 10-28-06: Ok, Ok, my prediction proved wrong. The U.S. pressured the U.N. to stop the battle between Israel and the Hizbollah terrorists, and they did, sort of. The U.N. troops are still there today. Yet the missles are still falling on Israel, and Israel is still responding with counterstrikes! It turns out that Hizbollah had 13,000 missles to lob into Israel! Many of these missles were/are hidden in towns, inside homes with roofs that slide back, allowing the missles to be hidden, yet fired easily. More regarding this can be found at http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/aug2006/hizbollah_rockets1html .) Of course these missles were provided mostly by Iran, Hizbollah's biggest supporter. This crisis is temporarily over.The biggest threat now comes from Iran and North Korea's refusal to stop producing nuclear fuel for weapons, weapons they both say they need to protect themselves from the country that calls them "evil," - the U.S. Remember, these two countries were two-thirds of President Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, with the third country being Iraq, the one country proven to have no nuclear or W.M.D. (weapons of mass destruction) ambitions. The U.S. pressured the U.N. for many more sanctions against North Korea, and North Korea has already responded by saying the enforcement of these sanctions is "a declaration of war" against them. Check out the above U.S. Dept. of Defense night-time photo of North and South Korea. North Korea requires almost a total blackout after 9p.m. to conserve power. They are heavily dependent on China, their best friend, for fuel to give them electricity. Millions in North Korea are malnourished or are dying because of their dictatorships' policies. They are a desperate country. Does this situation sound serious enough to you? And now that we've had a very mild hurricane season pass, it's time to remind you that we are currently at the start of what hurricane predictors call a 20 year cycle of increasingly numerous and violent hurricanes.)
We have more need now than ever before to put together a comprehensive "hurricane kit" capable of sustaining our families over a period of time probably exceeding three weeks. We've got hurricanes, avian flu, and a possibly larger war staring us in the face. For some of us this means getting together lots of canned food, dry food, even MRI kits off the internet, storing water- lots of it- with a drop of clorine in each gallon, having a solar or wind-up powered radio, candles, matches- lots of 'em. EXTRA MEDICINES could be hard to acquire, but possibly worth the effort. (Expect the transportation/ food / medicine delivery system to slow to a crawl if loads of folks are getting really sick.) Go on the web and look at lots of survival lists; decide for yourself what you need.There's lots of lists available, from the Red Cross to "doomsday- Mad Max" lists. Get started NOW! Debbie and I are currently pretty low on extra cash until our old home sells, but we're putting together a basic hurricane kit with hopes of enlarging it substantially later. If it's a catagory 4 or larger hurricane, we'll head for the mountains, to our unsold home there. If it's avian flue, we'll stick it out here by not leaving the house except in an emergency. If it's a big war, well, my mom's a veteran of what that was like, so I'd defer to her advice. Doubt I'd need my guns though. Who knows. Moslems don't hate us, but there are enough terrorists that do, and if it escalates into a Moslem vs. Christian war, ANYTHING could happen.
Let's get prepared for a hurricane for now, but the wiser ones of us will look down the road and prepare for the oncoming avian flu. I'm writing this because I care for you, knowing only friends and family will read this. Ignore it at your peril.
Love- Mike

Got Tornadoes? Get a Weather Radio! Feb. 05, 2007

Florida just got slammed again with at least three tornadoes four days ago. They swept across the state during the very early morning while almost everyone was asleep. The area had no warning sirens. Twenty people dead at last count. The area looks like a giant bomb went off- leveling most of the homes. A new church, built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane was flattened. People were swept out of their beds with some found far away, some in lakes. The contents of their homes were swept right out along with them. The destructive power of a tornado can't be stopped, but can we do something to save lives?
The answer is yes. IF YOU LIVE IN AN AREA SUSCEPTIBLE TO TORNADOES, GET A WEATHER RADIO! For an investment of around $30 you could possibly save your life. As soon as we moved from the mountains of Virginia, where tornadoes rarely occur, to the coast of North Carolina, where waterspouts often come ashore and turn into tornadoes, I got a weather radio.
For those totally unaware of what a weather radio is, let me explain: All it does is sound a loud alarm for 15-20 seconds, then a robotic voice announces the change in weather that has activated the alarm and any precautions needed to be taken, etc. I got the smaller, more portable one from Radio Shack (pictured above), so we can take it with us on the boat. Other units look more like bedroom clock radios. Mine runs on batteries, or AC power. It does its job, sometimes too well. Let me explain that last sentence: When you get a weather radio, you sit down and program it to respond to signals sent from the National Weather Service. You get to choose the KIND of weather you want it to respond to, and THE AREA of the country about which you want to be alerted. I could have set mine to alert me of weather warnings in Virginia if I had wanted. I chose the counties surrounding us here in New Bern, NC, and I chose possibly too many weather warning types. I probably could have omitted hurricane warnings. Those are ubiquitous on the TV and radio. I chose for it to alarm me of strong thunder storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. (I think you can even program these things to warn you of freeze warnings!) Programming the thing isn't hard, but is time consuming. Just sit down for a few minutes with the owner's manual and "get 'er done." Then put the radio near your bed and turn the volume all the way up! You want to hear it go off when you're watching a movie or whatever. You can also push another button to have the radio tell you the current and future weather conditions, tides, wave heights, etc.
Is it a pain? Sometimes, during the summer, it will alarm us to strong thunderstorms passing through. When it goes off and I'm near enough to hear it, I head back to the bedroom to listen to the warning. That lasts 30 seconds, usually. Then I push a button to tell the unit I have heard the message, so it won't sit there and emit loud beeps to alert me that I have missed a message. This is no problem. But at 3 a.m. it is sometimes. It is a rude awakening! I know it's just doing its job, and I usually fall quickly back asleep. Remember- it was around 3 a.m. when those sleeping souls were sucked right out of their bedrooms with no time to prepare.
Get a weather radio if you live in an area that has tornadoes or frequent strong thunderstorms. Those strong thunderstorms seem to be getting more frequent, what with the global warming that scientists have finally agreed is occurring. (See my blog from last year on global warming, back when those scientists couldn't seem to make up their minds as to just why the Antarctic shelf and glaciers in Greenland were melting so fast.) When a strong thunderstorm nears, I frequently go out on the deck and close the patio table's umbrella which is screwed firmly to the deck, then run a rope around the lightweight chairs, etc. and anchor them to the railing. Sometimes I take down the hanging plants, wind chimes, etc. that could get beat-up. Then I go inside and watch "the show." These can be very strong storms, lots of high winds (up to 60 mph!) lightning and sideways rain! Once past us, I usually have to go out and haul small and large branches to our burn pit. (We have lots of trees.) Bigger storms take hours of cleanup time. These storms are now predicted to only get more frequent and stronger with global warming occurring. I am seriously thinking of removing some of those lovely trees nearest our home, knowing they could fall on us. My neighbor says, "That's what you have insurance for."
I predict weather radios will become almost as common as iPods soon, because of global warming. For the price of an inexpensive dinner for two you can have at least a few minutes warning from a tornado. That's enough time to get into an interior closet, hallway,or bathtub with thick pillows from your sofa over your head. I wish those poor folks in Florida had those few moments. Give one to someone you love as a Christmas or birthday present!
(Added 2-6-07) I just heard a short news piece on NBC News last night about the Florida tornadoes. In it they said The National Weather Service issued three tornado warnings, one 16 minutes before they hit, one 11 minutes, and one 6 minutes before they touched down. Then the announcer went on to say a weather radio- some as inexpensive as 16$- could have saved many people. Wonder if they read my blog written just 8 hours or so before their broadcast? Naaaa.
(Added 3-9-07) Yesterday I went to Radio Shack and bought another weather radio like the one I own. This is to be a gift for a relative. It's been a couple years since I got mine, and the portable model is a tad smaller and a lot pricier! It's now going to cost you $70 to get the hand-held model WITH the power adaptor!!! That's almost double what I paid. Maybe check around for a better price- like on eBay, etc.
I looked at their "Red Cross" model weather radio with all the nice features- hand crank capability, flashlight, AM-FM radio, even a cell phone charger! But DON'T buy this unit! If you inquire, you'll find the owner's manual is rather vague on the topic of whether or not the unit will AUTOMATICLY alert you of a changing weather event. The store manager told me she had asked other Radio Shack dealers and had been told IT WILL NOT PERFORM THIS FUNCTION! Looks slick, but don't buy it for THIS purpose. Put your $50 towards one that will awaken you, alert you, without you having to turn it on to the NOAA channel.

Let's Stop School Killings- October 03, 2006

Yesterday was the third intrusion into a school in a week resulting in loss of life. This time it was a seemingly stable thirty-something fella harboring "a grudge" and a desire to molest who barged into a one room schoolhouse in an Amish community in Penn., chased out the boys, and methodically shot the girls, execution style, after binding them. Five girls dead at last count, with more critically wounded.
What's the solution? Well, to discuss that you first have to discuss the problem. There's a lot of insane folks out there, and with more cutbacks in funding for the mentally disabled and their hospitals/treatment, that figure will only increase. Funding for mental health needs to be restored, plain and simple.
And these crazy folks have easy access to lots of guns. Doubt there's much we can do about this aspect of the problem. Guns are an ingrained part of American society. I own a few myself, mostly hunting rifles, but included is one pistol for family protection from the crazies and drug addicts out there. Never had to grab it. But the other night something happened that makes me worry about even owning it. It's a digression from my topic, but, hey, it's my blog, and I can ramble if I want to. I was doing the usual barbeque thing- I cook out a lot to help Debbie ( and it tastes better!)- around dark-thirty at night and was just shutting down the gas and collecting the cooked meat onto a platter. I'd turned to go back inside with it when a strong light shone on my face. I looked, and it was coming from 20 feet away on my deck. I saw a silhouette of a big man with a light held high and pointed at me. I said, "Can I help you?" (What else does one say under those circumstanses?) And the man said, "I just thought I'd come over here and help myself to whatever you're cookin'. Smells great!"
It was my neighbor with his "night fishing" light on his head. He was, of course, joking. He'd never steal anybody's food. He was just foolin' around. But what if I had been sitting inside watching TV and had seen his light in my backyard? Would I have reached for that pistol? I doubt it. It would probably take something more serious than that... or would it? Our community has its share of escaped felons, home invaders, and serious drug addicts that need to steal to feed their habits. OK, digression over. Sorry.
So what do we do about these school killings? We have to do a better job of guarding our schools. Ever since Columbine occurred, schools across the country have added "School Resource Officers" to their campuses. This is usually a town cop, on duty with his uniform, pistol and radio communication gear. My previous school where I taught almost always had one on duty for the 800+ student campus, including the adjacent middle school. The trouble was he was only one man to cover a lot of ground. If a loud, complaining parent came into the middle school office, he went. If a fight broke out in the high school's cafeteria, he went. But he couldn't guard every door in those buildings. Any idiot that wanted in those buildings had no problem doing so. Can we guard every door? The cost to the schools and community for hiring enough extra resource officers to do the job right would be far too high. Kids need to come and go- to the office- to the bathroom! We can't just lock the doors and then post a teacher/guard there at the end of every class to unlock the door nearest their classroom and "inspect" every person that enters.
Or can we? What would this entail? First, we'd have to remove that teacher from most extra duties- coaching, club sponsoring, etc. The extra work in maintaining security at "their" door would be enough extra work. Second, we'd have to ensure that teacher had passed a course or two in security work commensurate with the work required. Third, to really be effective we ought to strongly consider arming those teachers with a Taser gun or a discretely hidden pistol, perhaps one with the special "fingerprint recognition" technology now available- so only the registered user can use the pistol. Yep, they're expensive, but worth it. No one could steal that pistol and use it. Certification in this kind of firearms use would also be required.
Since most perimeter school doors are also "fire exits" the doors would have to be automatically locked to anyone trying to get in, but easily opened from the inside to allow egress in an emergency. These kinds of door locks have been around for 50 years. Let's utilize them.
How about those bathroom visits, trips to the office during class, etc. that entail leaving one building to enter another? Build more bathrooms. They're cheaper in the long run than paying officers to guard doors. Provide a (parent volunteer?) guardian to accompany any student to the office. Tell parents coming to pick up Johnny for a dentist visit to come a little early to get him between classes. (Frankly, I've never understood why most doctor visits can't be after school anyway!) Sacrifices have to be made to help ensure security at our schools. Combined with metal detectors through which every teacher and student must pass at the main entrance of every school, my plan of putting armed teacher-guards at every unlocked perimeter door during its use would make schools safer.
Our society is adapting to sacrifices just like these all across America. It will probably get worse in the upcoming years. Israel has been adapting to daily terrorist threats for decades. Our threats come from within as well as from the outside. There are obviously enough troubled individuals in our own country to warrant major changes in the security of our schools. What is the price of just one murdered student? We have to pay that price now before we lose more.

ADDED Aug. 19, 2008- almost two years after I wrote the above: I just heard a brief piece on ABC morning news that entailed an interview with the superintendent of the Texas Harrold Independent School District. In the interview the superintendent said he was allowing guns to be brought to school each day by his teachers once they had completed training in their use and how to handle hostage situations. He gave two reasons for allowing guns in his school: The school was thirty minutes away from any police protection, and the school was located right next to a major highway, so it had easy access and escape for a potential shooter. Sounds like a logical decision to me. Wonder how long it will take before some governing body takes his common sense answer to this problem away from him?

PAY TEACHERS WHAT THEY EARN! October 19, 2006

Disclaimer: Now that I've retired from teaching full time, I can write this. It's too late for me to benefit from this, but it's not too late for society to have more teachers dedicated to their profession and partly repaid for their schoolwork done at home.
I taught elementary (Title 1-Chapter 1) reading and math for 10 years. Those were some of my most enjoyable years of teaching. It entailed working with kids that were mostly affectionate and appreciative of the help that I provided. I worked about 40 hours per week at that job. This gave me lots of time to go back to the farm/homestead and do lots of chores. It was a low-stress job. I earned my pay of $8,500 per year, no doubt about it. And I never once carried a briefcase.
But I also taught 21 years as an English teacher. Let's get something straight: There is a world of difference in these two jobs. As an English teacher, if you want to be effective, you HAVE to put in a lot more hours than your peers. As an English teacher I worked an average of 60 hours per week. Big difference. Some weeks, after I had been in the profession for 5 or more years, I worked a full 80 hours, usually because of grading research papers or essays at home. Some weeks I only worked 50 hours because the grading load was easier, just the usual quizzes and tests. But averaged together it was about 60 hours per week for 21 years. Over those 21 years, if you add the extra hours, it comes to 27 years of 40 hours per week of work, the "normal" work week most Americans have. Therefore, I haven't taught 31 years total. I've taught 37 years over a 31 year period! That's 6 years worth of grading papers, etc., at home!
(Added Oct. 28, 2000: I just found this statistic and thought it interesting, so I've added it here: In The Virginia Journal of Education, Nov., 2006, p.19, they report that public school teachers spend an average of 50 hours per week on all their duties, including grading papers. I can only assume that when they say "public school teachers" they mean elementary and secondary teachers, including overburdened English teachers, and the average is the average of all those polled. Like I said, interesting.)
My normal week as an English teacher consisted of teaching the classes, sometimes with the same lesson plan, often with two or three different lesson plans because they were different classes (like English 9, English 11, Drama, etc.) Then I would often stay late at school for coaching drama or forensic arts until 5 p.m. I would drive home and check the mail. My wife often would find me napping with a Newsweek magazine on my lap when she arrived home. I wasn't physically exhausted. Teaching high school emotionally drains most teachers. I'd try and do one short chore, then I'd watch the news and eat dinner. By 7 p.m. it was time to open the briefcase.
How do you tell if an English teacher is trying to be effective in his or her job? Look for the ones carrying a briefcase or something with a lot of papers in it. It's a simple fact: In order to produce better writers you HAVE to assign more writing, AND that writing has to be graded so the students can receive feedback as to how to improve. Stand outside any high school and watch as the teachers head for their cars. I've done this hundreds of times. You can easily tell who is taking work home to be graded. Most teachers carry no bag, just a purse if they're female. But watch the effective English teacher carry a heavily loaded bag, briefcase, or box full of research papers, projects, essays, short stories, etc.
So I'd open my briefcase and grade papers until 11 p.m. most every night. (That's 4 hours, minimum per night.) Some nights I'd grade until 1 or 2 a.m. if I really wanted to get that batch of papers back to the students right away. After grading, I always had to do my lesson plans for the next day. This usually only took 30 minutes or so, after I had been teaching for 4 to 5 years. But during those first 5 years of teaching I often found myself studying what I had to teach the next day. This often entailed reading a selection or two, or intently studying pronouns or something so I wouldn't sound like a fool trying to teach the next day. And, of course, anytime I was given a new assignment- a different class level, etc.- that meant a whole different set of quizzes and tests to write, different books and pieces to read, different lesson plans, different everything! I usually went to bed after my wife was asleep.
I have to say right now that I owe a huge thank you to Debbie for being a partner of sorts in my career. (It's almost as if the school board got 1.10 teachers for the price of 1.) She would help me enter homework, quiz, and test scores almost every night when she could. I'd call out the name and grade and she'd enter it in my grade book. We found this was a lot faster than my entering them by myself. Deb was a professional bookkeeper and was gracious enough to average all those grades and help me do report cards for 19 of my 21 years teaching English. She double checked EVERY student's average, with only one mistake (easily corrected) in all those years. Not too many teachers can say they had the marital help I had. This help enabled me to do even more grading, test and quiz writing, etc. than normal. As for anyone possibly wondering about the privacy of a pupil's grade, Deb rarely connected a grade with an actual face of a student. She simply didn't know them, so that was never an issue. She maintained absolute secrecy about all school matters. Again, never a problem in my entire career.
That was my usual workday. I, like most folk, waited for the weekend when I could relax some. My Friday nights and Saturdays were usually my own. If I had a huge load to grade, I'd reluctantly start on Saturday afternoon, knowing it would make my Sunday easier. But, make no doubt about it, Sundays were for grading. Almost every Sunday for 21 years you could find me grading papers in my recliner. (I wore out 2 recliners this way!) I graded all day on Sunday, finishing, as usual, around 11 p.m. Can you imagine how many family outings I had to pass up? How many times my son would come to me with a football in his hand wanting to throw it around, and I'd have to tell him I couldn't? I'm in no way looking for pity, but just telling the truth. My family and not just myself had to make a huge sacrifice because of my chosen profession and my desire to do well in it. No doubt about it. I owe them all a big thank you.... and, I guess, a big "I'm sorry." With some hesitation, I can honestly say I partly neglected my family for one-seventh of their lives during my career. That was a hard sentence to type.
Was it worth it? Well, as a beginning English teacher in Florida in 1971, I got $7,000 per year and worked an average of 90 hours per week, starting out as an English teacher and coach. We had no kids of our own back then, but it still was not worth it. It was killing me, draining my soul. In 1985 I started teaching English in Virginia, at around 80 hours per week for about $17,000 per year, but with two kids of my own. It was an arduous struggle finishing 31 total years of teaching, but I ended at $40,000 per year and was averaging 60 hours per week. I have been put in Who's Who of America's Teachers a dozen times, and into the newer National Honor Roll's Outstanding American Teachers- 2005/2006. Unlike some teachers I know, I never once applied for or sought any honors. These were honors bestowed upon me by my previous students that thought I had made a positive change in their lives. God bless 'em! Many of my students loved me and the work I did for them. Most liked me, but you can't win 'em all. I'm sure a few hated me, school in general, and their English classes in particular.
So can I say it was worth it? Yes and no. I'm proud of the job I did. Not every teacher can say that. But I'm sad that I hurt my family by ignoring some of their needs during that time. There were many times I wished I had taught social studies, history, math, anything that didn't come with the required briefcase. (Don't get my wrong, I have talked to math teachers, etc. that have taken work home, but none, I repeat-none- can honestly look me in the eye and say they worked at home nearly as much as I did.)
Let's pay teachers for the work they do. How to do that could be a problem. Most teachers are an honest lot. If you can agree with that statement then you can agree with this one: Let the teacher who carries home work also have a time log to "punch-in" when they start grading, writing tests, etc. at home. When done they "punch-out," enter it on their time log. Pay $5.00 per hour just for work done at home to ALL teachers. Sure the English teachers will bring home the most extra pay, but I think you'll be surprised how many other teachers start assigning writing to be graded later by themselves at home. It is a well known fact that many teachers simply will not assign any work that requires them to grade much at home. They feel they aren't being paid for it, so they don't assign it. Very early in my career I witnessed an English teacher (of a school's brightest honor students) dump an entire day's worth of student writing into the trash can rather than take it home to be graded. (When I asked him why he'd thrown it all away the teacher said he had "checked it off" in his grade book as being done.) This gave me a bitter taste for lazy teachers not dedicated to their students. My idea could change all that. Or the dishonesty that rears its ugly head any time money comes into an equation could ruin this idea: Teachers could start cheating the time clock in order to earn more.
Another alternative is a form of merit-based pay: Simply pay teachers extra for the total work they produce. If a teacher says a set of papers took 8 hours to grade- a common fact with English teachers- give them compensation for the grading they did. They need it. Trust me. I've been there! I remember having to go to the bank to take out a $300 loan to fix my car's radiator because I simply didn't have $300. I remember buying my young son and daughter's clothes at Goodwill back before they cared about "style" or even "newness." I remember having my kids in the "free/reduced lunch" program in the elementary school where I taught. I know poverty. We lived it for years. As a family, we didn't get "comfortable" until I hit the $35,000 per year pay scale. That's a fact. By then it was almost too late to save much for my kids' upcoming college tuitions.
Let's crunch some numbers: If the average (English!) teacher works 20 hours per week at home on schoolwork, and is paid just $5 per hour for it, that comes to $100 per month extra pay. Multiply that times a ten month school calendar and you get $1000 extra pay for extra work. That kind of merit pay should not break too many school budgets. That money is deeply deserved by those teachers earning it, and I know it is needed by them. If you really want results, double that $5 to $10 per hour, and watch what happens! If just one wealthy, local philanthropist could start an experiment in one school to do this, and thoroughly document the amount of work done at each teacher's home, then publish the results, I think we'd all be surprised at the results. The students would improve in multiple areas, and the level of satisfaction by being just a bit compensated for their extra work would be evident in the teachers. More of those teachers would stop considering a career change! (Where's Bill Gates when you need him?)
We are at a point of crisis in education. We have to start paying teachers more or we'll see a steady decline in good teachers. I think we're seeing it already. Periodically I would encourage some of my pupils to go into teaching. Good candidates for the profession have told me to my face they don't want to enter teaching because they don't want the low pay that comes with it. Let's face it: Nowadays a teacher has to get a "calling" -much like a preacher- in order to enter teaching as a career. Let's at least pay these teachers more for the work they produce. Then we'll see an increase of dedicated professionals. The teachers deserve it, and the students deserve more dedicated teachers.

My Departure from the World of Retail Sales- January 21, 2007

It's all about "the bottom line- profit." OK, that's the way our economic system functions; That said, I can understand when a cash register doesn't ring-up sales as often or quickly as it could, that management needs to scrutinize the reasons why.
Now I'll be specific: I was given the opportunity to join the staff at a local business, one long in local history (100+ years!) in my smallish town. I really liked most of the merchandise and thought, as a retired teacher, I'd enjoy working part-time there as well as at my other part-time job, which is not in retail, but where they love my work. The shocking reality was that I'd have to learn to use the new business computer/ cash register software under pressure and with little effective assistance.
I've run cash registers before, but it was back when all you dealt with was cash, checks, or credit transactions. I'd worked for two different record stores, Pizza Hut, and Sears prior to starting my career in teaching. And during those teaching years I've almost been a leader- in the forefront, locally, so to speak- of using the computer to do sundry jobs- long before other teachers gave it a try: I've figured how to use Adobe Photo shop to remove red-eye, re size and do photo resolution changes, etc. I've used different programs to put together school and band posters, photo albums, slide shows, put up my band's 8 page web site (with MP3 files) and numerous other successful work. The difference here is that I could take my time to train myself in using these programs. But I always got the job done, and done right. I'm proud of the work I've done and the computer programs I've mastered. I'm no newbie. But I am 58 years old. I don't memorize as well or as fast as I used to.
Still, I never had a problem, given my time and dedication to a completed product. Computers have taken over the cash register during this span, and learning a proprietary (private company's) program to run the computer can be a steep learning curve. On my new employer's computer/register I can easily do cash, check, and credit transactions, as well as take payments over the phone and in person for rentals. For most businesses this would be all that was needed. But these duties probably only comprise 80% of the needed work done at this computer. It's the other 20% that got to me. In addition to the above three or four functions, there are many others where I simply have to turn to someone for help. I've never been guilty of badly messing-up the end-of-day receipts, and don't want to start now. These other functions are less often used, but are important to such a diverse business. They include doing layaways, making payments on them, paying them off; account purchases; taking-in repairs and paying them off (done two different ways as per just who does the repair); etc., etc. Believe me, there's a myriad of other functions that register does, almost all of which must (evidently) be learned quickly by any new employee.
So how was I trained to do these functions? Almost all my fellow employees- even the bookkeeper, God bless her!- showed me their way of doing certain things. We're talking 60 second to 2 minute lessons. And over half of these short sessions were interrupted by a phone ringing that had to be answered or a customer with a request. That's when the lesson ended by necessity. (The one lesson that really stands out was when a fellow employee, seeing me use the computer mouse to work the software, took it and threw it the length of its short cord, saying, "Don't touch that! You don't need it!" In fact, his one, brief lesson may have been the best. I rarely had to use the time-consuming mouse after that.
The computer, besides having its proprietary point-of-sales software, also had the same proprietary software's "training program." I should have been alerted when I noticed the training program was called the "Test" program. I spotted it on the computer screen's start-up page, but when I asked about it I was told it was pretty useless. Two weeks later, with my skills obviously still lacking, the assistant manager asked me to try it out. It was an exact copy of the regular P.O.S. software, only transactions done on it didn't go into the computer's memory. If I had had someone looking over my shoulder and teaching me, it could have helped. But there was no such person available. There's no money to be made in staff training until the training is complete! I did a few of the transactions I already knew how to do, but was soon lost and frustrated on the other functions and had no help learning just how to do them. What good does it do to just stare at a screen when you don't know what to put on it?
If I had been given the chance to stand at the computer and DO each of the more complex functions at least five or ten times in a row, I know I could have mastered them. But retail is obviously about sales, not training. Instead, after being shown how to do something new, I was not asked to actually do it again for many days. This gave me ample opportunity to forget what I was just shown! If I don't use it, I lose it. Don't most people?
One fellow employee commented that it was hard for me to learn the software because I was constantly being taken away from it to do other jobs: "The new guy" - me- got to spend half a day delivering merchandise, sometimes in the dark, or lugging around the store a large stepladder and replacing burned out incandescent and florescent lights, or spending two-thirds of a day just vacuuming the entire store, and another few hours spot-cleaning the carpets.(OK, I admit I volunteered for this last job.) Got to admit, it's hard to get much software experience when sweeping cigarette butts in the parking lot But these were jobs needing doing, and I'm a "team player," so I did them. (The only time I complained was to a much younger employee when I said I didn't like going to my next job while soaking wet with sweat in my "sales clothes.") No one told me to wear jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers on "maintenance days." I wore a salesperson's clothing to do maintenance work. So here I was, a part-time employee, expected to learn the software, yet I was constantly being taken from it to do other jobs.
It has now been four weeks since I started this job. I came into the frying pan at Christmas rush, so the flame was on high at the time. I knew the least about the business when I was needed the most. At the conclusion of the Christmas sales period I was congratulated and thanked by the store's owner who said I had been a big help to his staff and had contributed to the store setting a record profit. And that same owner called me into his office to thank me for "stepping up to the plate" by offering to spot-clean the many dark, unsightly stains on the carpet. This fine man recognizes initiative and hard work. He even gave me my first-ever Christmas bonus! (Teachers don't get bonuses too often.) He is a very kind person that I will miss. During our three-part interview process (once interrupted by me having to leave to go to my other part-time job) he told me: "Don't feel guilty if you ever want to quit this job. If you want to quit, go ahead." Granted, I've only been interviewed four or five times for employment, but his words seemed strange during an interview. Now it seems like a prophesy of sorts, like he knew it would happen, like it had happened before.
I felt inadequate and even rejected by a couple fellow employees for the past week. My only interpretation is that they've grown weary of helping me. After only three weeks there, this overpowering sense of doom fell upon me. After four weeks I know it's not in my head: I've noticed contempt towards me from one employee, the one most helpful when I started! And others are purposefully ignoring me or giving me curt answers to my innocuous questions. I'm a "dead man walking!" I don't need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows, as Dylan sang. So at the conclusion of a very busy Saturday, during which I had really earned my $8 per hour, I turned to the assistant manager, a guy that I had previously thanked for his patience and kindness during my "internship," and asked, "Do you think I should be looking elsewhere for another job?"
His expression of consternation told pages as he responded with, "Well....( insert long pause)...You'll have to talk to (insert owner's name) about that."
All my life I've made it a point to not be where I wasn't wanted. In teaching, I've made it into the Who's Who of America's Teachers a solid dozen times, and another professional honor organization once, without ever seeking those honors. My students wanted me. My school system of 29 years asked me to stay another year for double salary! They wanted me. Tomorrow I will quit the world of retail sales. They don't want me.
Through my teen and adult life I've had the ability to "outwork" most other employees, through sheer determination and strength when I was young, and through perseverance as I aged, often logging 80 hours per week as a teacher (see next blog entry). That willpower is simply not with me as much as before. Yes, I gave it a pretty good try, and I feel I improved this retail business some while there, cosmetically- and I think I made a couple of the employees aware of the importance of price tags on merchandise. (Some customers don't want a salesperson assisting them for various reasons, they just want to look and note prices; these customers need price tags!)
I'll survive. I still get my full teaching pension and my other part-time job salary. (They just gave me another raise and a bonus!) In another year and a half I can dip into my TSA savings, and in four short years social security kicks in. Yes, I'll make it, but it'll be without much respect for this new wide world of retail sales.

Today's Music: Superficiality Over Substance - March 13, 2007

Dylan sang "The times they are a-changin'" and, boy, was he right! Popular music continues to change as the years go by. I have trouble saying music is "evolving" because of the implied meaning of "improving through evolution." Today's music is far from improving on what has come before, in my opinion. More on this later.
I just bought a DVD of great interest to me: "To Tulsa and Back- On Tour with J.J.Cale." I have admired John Cale's music since I was a 21 year old clerk in an Orlando record store back in the early '70's. I've only managed to see him play one time, and through no fault of his own, it was a most dissapointing night. My wife, son and I traveled from Virginia to Charlotte, NC, to see him after over 30 years of loving his music, buying his albums, playing some of his songs in various band incarnations, and "spreading the gospel" on the quality of his music to anybody who would listen. It was a medium-sized venue (the Vistalite- sp?) with a bar and a $15 per person cover charge. I thought seeing Cale in such an intimate room would be a blessing compared to seeing him in concert in a large venue. Boy, was I mistaken! The main problem was the youngish (21-30 year old) crowd that populated the place. Sure, there were quite a few 40 to 50ish folks there, but the boisterous youngsters far outnumbered us "oldtimers." And were they loud! Most had never heard of J.J. Cale, but were there to party. We could barely hear the music. Management started the show with a warning that Cale didn't play loudly (he's a believer in nuance or finessee in his guitar work, not volume,) and that they needed to "keep it down" so others could hear! Did they listen to that request? Hell no! We watched in total amazement as the management repeated this request three more times throughout Cale's show. We ended up hearing about one-fourth of his music. The crowd would loudly talk and yell throughout most every song. They obviously wern't there to hear Cale's music.When we got home I shot off an angry email to the venue's management about the situation. Never got a response.
Here's my point: It seems "today's youth"- at least the majority- is far more interested in the superficial over substance in their music and in their reaction to it. The above described patrons were far more into drinking and partying than listening to a recognized song-meister and guitar player. For those who don't know, John Cale wrote "After Midnight" and "Cocaine"- a decidedly antidrug song, and his popularity took off when Eric Clapton covered them in his albums. Cale also penned "They Call Me the Breeze," covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and favorites like "Magnolia," "Lies," and "Momma Don't (Allow No Guitar Playin' in Here,") covered by hundreds of bands for over 40 years! John Cale is now 65 years old and still touring. He does it for the love of music. He doesn't need to tour. He is the ONLY musician I've heard of who turned-down his record company's request to get out and promote his hit songs, a decision that cost him millions of dollars. He is a man of moral decisions. His answer to his record company's request: "If my songs are already a hit, why promote them?"
I used to DJ dances and wedding receptions, back in the '80's and '90's, a moonlighting English teacher making a few extra bucks. It was dismaying to watch the music gradually change from "hair bands" like Night Ranger, with their high-energy ballads, to rap music, with it's droning, boring beat and offensive lyrics. I challenged all my students to bring me a rap album that did not have offensive language. The challenge went unanswered for four or five years when one day a very motivated, bright, Black male student, (and the son of a police officer) brought me a CD. I took it home, put on the headphones to better hear the lyrics, and sat on the porch to listen. It was a Christian rap album! No bad lyrics there, I had to admit the next day to the class. The student who loaned me the CD asked if I would buy that kind of music. I had to tell the truth: No, rap music simply lacked any melody- the rise and fall of notes that gives music variety and interest. I wouldn't buy it. But I thanked him for proving me wrong- that rap albums existed that didn't contain vulgar language. Unfortunately, most rap music is vulgar, offensive to women- constantly referring to them as "bitches"- offensive to all Black males- calling even themselves "niggas"- offensive to police- offensive to anything positive in life, constantly promoting "bling"-the things money and drug selling bring- over more positive values, and constantly promoting violence as the first and only choice to settling differences between people. My students today (Black and White) tell me they never look a stranger in the eye while on the street. Why? Because to do so is now interpreted by our youth as a challenge!! A challenge to be settled with violence- fists, knives, or guns, with guns predominating! This is a major change in American culture that did not exist before rap and hip-hop music took over the airways, advertising, recording and video industries. Coincidence? No. Rap music promoted the "gangsta" image to the point of it being desirable, first among Black youth; then, because of its popularity, that image has trickled down to White youth. Read that last sentence again. I've got to say here that not all students are emulating their "gangsta" rap heros. I've taught lots of really fine Black and White students, but I feel sorry for the many Black women, mothers of those students who struggle daily to keep that permeating "gansta" image from enveloping their children's whole lives. Bill Cosby's campaign to slow or stop this from happening is not enough. Few survive the enormous peer pressure to conform. It is a well known fact that 50% of all Black males are locked up, incarcerated, at any given time. Those men have bought-into the gangsta image. College educated Black women have a very difficult time finding a marriage partner, Newsweek reports. Duhh! Many more great Black men must step forward and speak out against this self-defeating music and the negative shadow it casts over the Black race or it will continue to spiral out of control.
Have you seen the "modern" way of dancing- done at high school dances and proms, and most dance floors in the nation since the 1990's? Most teens and twenty-somethings do "freaking"- they stand rubbing against each other, simulating the sex act. Prom chaperones across the nation have quite a time trying to stop this kind of dancing. (There's a reason why those kids want very low lighting at dances!) Now, these kids didn't invent sexuality in dancing, they just took it to the absolute limit. The only thing left is to remove the clothes! And what kind of music do they "freak" to? Rap and Hip Hop, with its repetitive, strong, primal beat, mostly done with a drum machine. Again, the beat of the music wins over the message of the song. The listeners are there to "groove and grind"- just like at the aforementioned John Cale show, not to listen to carefully crafted lyrics and melody, not to learn from the song. The music is superficial, lacking melody, lacking meaning. And they love it! Other music is out there, but Rap and Hip Hop dominates. That's basically why I gave up DJ jobs. I couldn't stand the music anymore. I had outgrown it. My dad hated my Rock and Roll, and I had learned to hate "the music" of a younger generation. I was a liberal and educated musician! This wasn't supposed to happen! But my dad hated "my" music because it was so different from his Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey. I feel a little more justified in that I have particular differences in my distaste for today's popular Rap and Hip Hop music.
So, in watching my J.J.Cale DVD, I listened as Cale said that people buy the music they grew up with, the music of their youth, their good times. He counted himself fortunate because some of his songs have "crossed over" to younger bands who cover his material. There are some serious musicians playing contempory music. John Mayer, Nora Jones, and The String Cheese Incident come to mind. There are lots more. But Rap and Hip Hop predominate the contemporary media. Today's youth, according to Cale, will continue to buy-into Rap's messages of violence well into their fourties and fifties! Ever wonder why the murder rate is 10% higher than just 10 years ago in our nation? It's now expected - almost accepted- that an arguement will end in gunfire- even on the highways between strangers!
Popular music has changed. Has it evolved? Dancing has changed. Has it evolved? Our whole culture has changed. Has it evolved? I don't think so. We've regressed. And to think this whole blog was supposed to be about music. Music and culture- you can't really seperate the two.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN! April 01, 2007

I believe it was Yogi Berra that first uttered that famous line I borrowed for this blog title. The reason I chose it is that Debbie and I have been living close to the poverty line these past three years, much the same as we had to live when we first married twenty-two years ago.
Why? Well, in 1985 I was in my twelfth year of teaching, maybe making $15,000 per year (and working 80 hours per week!) not quite half way through a career of 31 years. Debbie worked full-time at low wages, but our combined incomes were minimal. Deb and I moonlighted with a D.J. service and later a band to make extra money. We never took a vacation until my parents sent us to Acapulco, Mexico. I had to borrow money from the bank to fix my van. The little rental home we lived in with Michael John, my son, and Diane, my daughter, was heated by a wood stove, and was often a chilly environment in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. We survived by simply not spending money, unless necessary. We ate, but I'd be lying if I said we ate well. Children's clothes came mostly from Goodwill, until they got old enough to notice the difference, around third or fourth grade. Times were bad. And they wonder why 50% of all teachers quit teaching within the first three years!!! They wonder why they can't get and retain good teachers!!!
Things gradually improved around my twenty-fifth year of teaching, by then making near $30,000 per year. That's when we could tell a difference. We could actually get the little things that before required a "family conference"- an agreement before purchase. I remember coming home with a $120 VCR machine that I'd gotten without consulting Debbie, and feeling a tad guilty. But the bad-'ol-days were behind us, finally. We started making payments on a home just outside Independence, Virginia. The kids grew up and went off to college. Paying for it wasn't too big a deal because they got half their expenses paid by us and half by their biological mom with whom we shared custody fifty percent of the time. Yes, we still moonlighted doing D.J. and band work, but times were better; you could just feel it. It took 25 years of teaching to just feel comfortable, but we were finally fairly comfortable for the first time in our lives.
Then I retired with a full pension. We had been looking for five years for a place on deep water so we could have a small, cruising sized boat and maybe see some of the eastern coastline from the water. Our search took us to my birthplace- Hawaii, specifically the island of Kauai (the most beautiful one!)- but 24 days of looking at property there (in 2000, when it took $250,000 to get a crowded, little home) convinced us that there is indeed a reason you don't see too many white haired retirees living there. We met a doctor at his retirement party that told me he was leaving Kauai to move to California so his dollars would go farther. If a doctor would make that decision, what chance would a retired teacher have of financially surviving there? We hated giving up the idea of living in paradise, but decided to look elsewhere.
We looked from the Northern Neck of Virginia all the way down to Key West. Almost every vacation found us camping with a tent or in a cheap motel, looking for "the perfect place" somewhere on the east coast of the US where it doesn't get too cold or crowded. Key West used to be nice back in the '70s, but it had changed. Still a good place to visit. All of Georgia and South Carolina were just too hot and humid! Beaufort- pronounced "buu-fert"- South Carolina was the most friendly spot. Nice strangers would approach us to chat there. But the humidity almost did Debbie in!
The best place we found was Beaufort- pronounced "bo-fert"-North Carolina. The folks were a tad more reserved there, and waterfront home prices in that area were sky-high. But we both liked that area enough to start making concentric circles around it to outlying areas. We found New Bern, North Carolina, about 45 minutes away from Beaufort, to be just the right size, beautiful in enough spots- especially the historic, downtown area, and affordable. I bet I searched Realtor.com every day for real estate in the Beaufort- New Bern area for close to 2 years! Then I found it: the property listed on Realtor.com had what they call a "virtual tour"- a series of photos stitched together so that by downloading it you could turn your view to look at other adjacent areas, similar to standing and slowly turning your head in both directions. The price was close to right, it was on deep water, on Brices Creek, which emptied into the Trent River, which emptied a mile later into the Neuse River, which emptied a few miles out into the Pamlico Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. We had boating access to the entire east coast! We visited and bought it. Nothing else was as affordable. We were lucky to find it.
Now we had to put our home in Virginia up for sale. I had stripped wallpaper and painted a few rooms, getting ready for this time, but I hadn't done enough, it turned out. The home sat on the market for two years with only very "low-ball" offers. We rarely visited the house, but when we did we continued to clean and clean it out, trying to make it "salable." All this time we paid a nice neighbor boy to mow and trim the yard, check on the house weekly during the winter months and knock down cobwebs. We kept the heat on low, so pipes wouldn't freeze, and kept paying monthly mortgage payments, insurance, taxes, etc. It quickly drained us financially. It was tempting to rent it, but previous experience with renters in Debbie's mom's home taught us that lesson. (It cost us $6,000 to fix that home so it would sell.)
DO NOT BELIEVE HOME APPRAISER ESTIMATES OF YOUR HOME'S VALUE! We learned that the hard way. We were told by our first appraiser that our home was worth $214,000. (He was an ex-student of mine with whom I had had more than a few problems, and was doing me a "favor" he said.) The next appraisal came in at $185,000. (This was done by a friend of my ex-wife's, and he frankly told me it was a more realistic value!) So Debbie and I agreed a good asking price would be somewhere between the two appraisals- $189,000. Boy, were we wrong! Maybe in a great housing market would that have been a good price, but things in Grayson County, Virginia, and surrounding mountain communities were not lookin' up. Factories had closed left and right, sending almost all textile manufacturing to Mexico and China. Even the furniture plants were cutting back or closing entirely. There were, and are today, few good jobs to be found in those beautiful mountains. The few folks from Charlotte that came to the mountains to look wanted a home way out in the country with a dirt road and at least 5 acres of privacy in all directions. The locals who looked wanted a turn-key home where all they had to do was move in their furniture. Nobody seemed to want a home that needed (more) rooms stripped of their wallpaper and painting and new carpet! No one had the imagination to offer us a reasonable low-ball price and then do the work themselves with their choices of paint and carpet!! To this day I am amazed at that.
So we bit the bullet and paid to have all the rooms painted and new carpet put down in every room-even the basement- and two porches. This decision cost us close to $10,000! It came at a time when Debbie and I had already tightened our purse strings, so it meant "sucking it in" and tightening them some more. We were now living close to the poverty line again. It was deja vu all over again. We went again this year to AARP- American Association of Retired Persons- to have our taxes done because they did it for free. In the past three years we've learned (again) to simply not spend money unless absolutely necessary. We buy meat by looking for those special sale stickers they put on it just before it goes out of date. I ask for a "senior citizen" discount at many restaurants. (Wendy's Hamburgers is the best at this.) For my birthday this year Debbie gave me a new set of guitar strings. (I've still not put them on, wanting to stretch the usefulness of my current year-old strings by way too much!) No needed repairs to the house we live in have been done, windows replaced, faucets repaired, etc. (Just a leak in the roof fixed to keep more damage from occurring.) No vacations that we paid for. Mom paid to fly us out to San Antonio to visit her. When I "blew-out" both my shoulders pulling on the starter rope to my granddad's old outboard motor for three hours, it froze my right shoulder and pretty much disabled my left. I hated to do it, but went for help.The doctor did a series of x-rays and a costly MRI scan of my right shoulder that showed bone spurs and torn cartilage, basically a blown rotator cuff. When he told me he'd only operate on it after I unfroze it with therapy, I went. But when the therapist charged $70 per visit as my co-pay, out of pocket expense, I had her teach me how to try and do it myself at home. I only went there three times. It gradually got better, but I never went back to the specialist. Deb and I have postponed needed dental work, lots of it, and minor physical problem work, like "pre-cancerous" skin lessions removed, etc. We were right back where we were back in 1985! Don't get me wrong: I know there are plenty of folks out there who have it a lot worse than us. We never had to pick up aluminum cans to put food on the table like some. But we were one paycheck away from having to do just that! Fortunately, those paychecks kept coming.
Debbie works full-time in child care, and I work part-time at Sylvan Learning Center, but have held down two jobs for a few months, totaling over 50 hours per week. plus my retirement pension and a deferred compensation whereby I worked an extra year teaching, but get paid for it over a five year period. But paying two mortgages, two upkeeps, two sets of taxes and insurances were draining the financial blood out of us. Deb figures it cost us close to $800 per month to let that home sit empty. Times 3 years that comes to approximately $28,800! Maybe we should have rented it! But once burned, twice shy.
It's sooo nice to talk about it all in the past tense! Two days ago we closed on our old home. We had dropped our asking price incrementally down to $159,900. Someone finally looked at it and saw the money we had put into it, and the overall potential of the home and made us a realistic offer. It was a nice, local couple with a thirteen year old son, probably wanting to be closer to their workplaces and the school. (The home sits a little over a mile outside the town limits, so has easy access to schools and shopping, yet still has that country feel, but has a paved road leading to it!) Yesterday I walked them through the property, and they love it. They're happy there. And Debbie and I are more happy here, the first time in a long while. Another era in our lives is over. The deja vu is slowly fading away.

Realizing Life's Goals - June 03, 2007

Without goals in life, I'd be living without hope for the future. I try to make my goals realistic, within my grasp and abilities. I'm no brain surgeon or rocket scientist, for sure. So I've always aimed for attainable goals. Retiring to our spot on the water was one of those. Acquiring the "perfect boat" for such a spot was another.
I researched hard on the internet to find different areas on the water that were affordable for a retired teacher on a pension. I looked for close to 5 years, using dial-up web service- all we could afford! (Realtor.com became an almost daily visit.) That's hundreds of hours of waiting for pictures of homes to download, enough to drive an ordinary man to distraction- or worse. But I have an uncanny ability to be pretty patient. Don't get me wrong, I have a temper, and have my limits of frustration. Teaching the slower students as well as the bright ones has taught me patience, I think. If you want results from the slower pupil, ya got to be patient. It will come, but at an entirely different speed than the average student. (One of our key weaknesses in public education is that there are usually no special classes for the kids with verbal I.Q.'s in the 70 - 89 range, too smart for "Special Ed." classes- below 70 I.Q.- and struggling to keep up with average and brighter kids.) So to be an effective (and compassionate) teacher I learned to have lots of patience.
Debbie and I spent almost every vacation looking at homes. We started with the ideal location, Hawaii, where I was born. We even went back there for 24 days and really looked hard at homes, living as cheaply as possible without camping on the beaches. It was almost heartbreaking to come to the realization that it just wasn't a practical place to retire. We could only do it if we both worked two jobs. Some retirement! But if ya got the bucks, that's the place to go, if you think you wouldn't suffer from "Island Fever"- an itching to get off the island and back to bigger spaces, and friends and family on the mainland. Oh, by the way- don't waste your time on Oahu, my home island, and home to close to a million inhabitants. They have traffic jams, gangs, murders, and all the problems that come with living in close proximity. The Big Island- Hawaii- has some nice areas, more like small oasises among the bare lava flows that stretch for miles. It even has some affordable housing. But look out for buying home insurance; the Big Island has the only active volcanos in the archepeligo. That's the principle reason housing is affordable on that island. Maui is supposed to be nice, but local folk from Kauai tell me it's more for the "flaky Hollywood types" who only stay for two years or so, then move on, usually selling most of their furniture at garage sales that local Kauaiians grab up and resell back home. Look elsewhere, even for a brief visit. I can only recommend the island of Kauai, the northernmost island. It's called "The Garden Island" for a reason; it's the greenest of all Hawaian islands. It's where Hollywood loves to come and film Jurrasic Park, South Pacific, and even the fantastic TV show- Lost. It really reminds me of Daytona Beach around 1964. It's quiet, has few nightclubs that stay open past 9 PM, and many folks there are sort of "spiritual" in nature, very much into healthy lifestyles. Kauai has almost everything you could ask for, except a lively nightlife! The sidwalks sort of "roll up" around dark-thirty there. But no big crowds, very low crime rate, only a brief traffic jam around quittin' time, and it's an outdoors paridise! It's the ONE place in the US you should visit before you die. No kidding! (Just try and do it while you can still go kyacking and snorkling. You don't want to just be a wallflower at this dance.) If I ever win the lottery- guess where we'll head for? If you go to Kauai, and you see a middleaged White fella playing exceptional guitar left-handed, ask him his name. If his nick-name is "Lefty"- tell him Mike Upchurch, a fella he briefly befriended back in 2000, says hi.
So Deb and I checked out Key West. Save your money. Way too hot and expensive. The limited variety of terrain bothered me. It's just not green enough! And Key West of the present is not the Key West of Jimmy Buffet's old songs from the '70's. We looked at Norfolk, Virginia- way too crowded, the Northern Neck, and south along the coast until we hit Beaufort, South Carolina. Had to be the hottest, most humid spot we'd ever visited, but had the most friendly people we'd seen anywhere. Strangers would just come up to us and ask how we were doin'! This wasn't just one person, but several. That impressed us. Since climate and crowds affected our preferences greatly, we headed north and found a town of almost the same name to be our favorite spot-Beaufort, North Carolina, but pronounced "bow-fert", not "beau-fert" as in South Carolina. Unfortunately Beaufort, NC, turned out to be too small, too historic, and way too expensive. Even our real estate salesperson was a snob!
We made concentric circles out from Beaufort, looking at nearby areas until we found New Bern. This was it: perfect size -but growing perhaps too fast now, lots of history and beauty, lots of waterfront with deep water access for bigger boats, affordability, and nice climate. We went back home and I started focusing my web searches for a year on the New Bern area. Then we saw it: a home on Realtor.com that had one of those "virtual views"- a series of photos stitched together to give you the impresasion of turning slowly and viewing whole rooms, yards, docks, etc. It was in our price range on deep water on a beautiful creek that led to a nice wide river and out to the ocean. Perfect! We bought it and one goal was reached, our retirement home had been found. It only took 5 years of looking and patience.
The next goal was to put the right boat at our dock on Brices Creek. Our new home came with a boat, a SeaRay 21 foot openbow, basically a ski boat. I told the previous owner it would do us until I could get what I wanted- a small cabin cruiser. Unfortunately the motor in that boat died within a couple months of our moving in, and since a replacement motor would cost too much, I sold the boat on its trailer. Just a few trips out into the Neuse in that boat showed me I couldn't afford a V8 gas engine's thirst. It cost us $40 worth of gas for just one hour on the water, and that was when gas was way under $3 per gallon. I knew diesel motors were in my future.
I'd been researching small cabin cruisers for years on the internet, reading what others had said about theirs and others' boats. I can't remember exactly when I first heard of the Albin 25 and 27 aft-cabin cruisers. But what I had read must have excited some degree of passion in me because I immediately signed up to be a member of the (Yahoo) Albin Users Group online. I lurked online reading daily posts to this users group for over 4 years before I ever made my presence known by posting my first "letter" to the group. That was just 3 weeks ago. I made my first posting because I then felt for the first time I was actually a member of their group- I had bought my first Albin!
Because of sheer poverty, waiting for our Virginia home to sell, I had to wait for 3 years to get the boat I wanted. Patience again. In that time we made do with a small 16 foot sailboat for short excursions onto the water. It's my dad's old boat, a 1976 Advance StoAway cuddy cabin sailboat. I put a 4 hp Yamaha four stroke outboard on the back and we could motor down Brices Creek until we got under the bridge and out onto the Trent River. Then we could raise the mast and the sails, if the wind wasn't too strong- or too light! Using that little boat helped us maintain our sanity while waiting for the "right" boat. Then I found it: an Albin 27 aft-cabin for sale nearby in Oriental, NC! But this was in November '06, back before we'd sold our home, so we couldn't afford to buy it. I bet I checked that boat's status every day, just knowing someone would beat me to it. Then our house sold, and my lovely wife gave me permission to check the Albin out.
I did everything right- I thought. I hired a boat surveyor and a mechanic to check the boat. I paid nicely for a boat yard to haul it out so the bottom could be inspected carefully. Basically I invested $378 for the survey and $185 for the motor checkup, a total of $563 for a boat I didn't even own! What I learned was this: Hire the mechanic first! If the motor doesn't check out, and the cost of fixing or replacing the engine/ transmission is too high, why pay for the haul-out and survey? I learned the boat was sound, in great shape for an old gal made in 1984. But the engine (a Ford/Pugeot Lehman 4D61) was a bit long in the tooth, and basically obsolete. My mechanic never said that. He gave it a clean bill of health. I went home and researched the engine online and found out it was obsolete. Parts are getting hard to find, and pricy if you can find them at all! So I had to make a decision: either wait for another Albin like this (but with a newer engine) to come up for sale locally- which could take years, pay a captain to pilot one to me from Maine or Key West- at an additional fee of thousands of dollars, have one shipped overland on a custom trailer- again for thousands more, or get the one available now and locally and take a chance on the motor living up to its reputation of longitivity. Life is a gamble. I went for it and got the local Albin.
Check out the photo. Ain't she a beauty? My research and experience dictated I needed an economical and safe boat. These boats average under a gallon of fuel per hour! That's less than $3 per hour!! These Albins come from a long Swedish heritage of being efficient and safe. The original Albin 25Family Cruiser was designed and made in Sweden where marine conditions are notably rougher than around here. It proved so successful it was shipped all over, including to the US, where Albin finally opened its own manufacturing facility in Conneticuit, and began the "improved" and bigger Albin 27, my boat. I simply fell in love with this boat's design.
Because I love this boat so much I know it will be hard to write without prejudice about it, but here goes: It's safe! The boat goes at displacement speeds- that's 6 to 9 mph- pushing the water aside rather than riding up on top of it- called planing. That's the same speed as some $2,000,000 cabin cruisers make as they crosss the Atlantic. No one will ski behind it, but we can live with it. The boat has a high freeboard- or gunnel- from the water, which translates to a less likely chance of someone falling off it. (Notice how high the sides of the boat are from the water? That means if you are standing or seated it would be pretty hard to fall off this boat.) These boats regurlarly go across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, etc. to vacation. They are famous for taking bad weather and waves and surviving. It's hard to capsize one. This Albin 27 has a complete galley- a sink with pressurized cold and hot water. An icebox is built into the cabinet that we may use as a trash can because our Albin even has a refrigerator back in the aft cabin! A full head with sink, toilet and shower is in the main cabin. And there you will find a small eating settee and V-berths for two to sleep. Back in the aft cabin are two twin sized berths, lots of storage, and the forementioned refrigerator (that can double as a freezer.) Besides that refrigerator addition, and the added water heater, this Albin has an added space heater to the pilothouse area, so if we close that area off with canvas, we can heat it and the main cabin too. Nice. There's even a third battery just for the refrigerator that has its own solar collector I can attach to the roof and use to extend the battery's charge during anchoring-out times. Haven't tried it yet. Haven't tried the nice air conditioner yet either. It attaches over the front hatch when at dock and cools the main cabin area. Haven't tried putting up all the canvas that came with this boat. It encloses everything in back under the hardtop. The cxtension to the hardtop you see going back to the aft cabin cost the previous owners over $3000 extra, and keeps rain and sun off the boat's occupants riding back there. It has two drawbacks: it makes me have to slightly duck my head- since I'm 6'3", and it makes it a little harder to fish from that area. I thought aloud about removing it, and the boat surveyor, overhearing me, said to leave it for at least one season to see how much we appreciated it doing its job.
I could go on an on about this boat. But that isn't the point of this blog. It is to point out to the reader to set attainable goals, do thorough research on what you want to achieve, and to have patience with that goal's attainment. I shudder to think of some of the places we could have ended up living if we'd made a hasty decision; Lake Lanier, above Atlanta, seemed nice until I did some research and found out just why there were so many For Sale signs! That water is drying up and many docks have no water for months at a time, as a growing Atlanta and points south demand more and more from it. And what's left in that huge lake is polluted and getting worse every year. I could have bought another "go-fast" boat just like so many have. I see them every day sitting "on the hard" at my local marina, rarely if ever being used because of the expense of today's gasoline. I know almost all boats are "a hole in the water into which you pour money." Mine probably won't be any different. But until that motor finally gives up and dies, we're goin' boating on the cheap! See ya on the water! Next goal? To make a professional recording of my songs.

Stuff Happens- October 21, 2007

"That's life." " Stuff happens." Or, as my neighbor responded when I asked him if he knew why some laurel bushes might have died on the other side of my house, "Things die." Not the answer I was looking for, but still an answer. And a valid one.
Deb and I had just (luckily!!) sold our old home in Virginia this summer, invested loads of money into our new home and dock, when I woke up one morning with numbness in my left hand and pain in the left arm. The pain kept me from much sleep for many nights until a couple weeks of chiropractic adjustments ended it. It seems four years of football in high school wherein I used my neck, head and helmet as a battering ram, plus plain old spinal deterioration over the years caused a nerve or two that run down my left arm from my neck (spine) to be crushed/ pinched by the vertebra. I continued with the three times a week visits for three months, thinking they may just cure the problems with my hand. The numbness and weakness have persisted in my left hand- my guitar playing hand.
It seemed my hobby of playing guitar since age 14 (44 years) and my new career of 2 years- being a singer, songwriter, and guitarist- had left me. Blown up in my face- like the photo above. All my plans for my retirement career (an oxymoron?) had changed. I'm just now accepting the fact that I've lost the past 25 years of learning guitar. Don't get me wrong; I can play some, just sloppier than usual, and a "C" chord is out of the question, as are similar shaped chords, most rapid lead playing, etc.
I can still strum the thing, especially the above pictured Gibson Les Paul, which I purchased a few years back because it was the easiest to play electric guitar I had tried. But it lost out to my Fender Stratocaster, simply because the Strat had tone, tons of tone the Les Paul lacked. I am really glad I bought it now! I can barely play my Martin acoustic guitars anymore. My old standby Stratocaster, with its great tones, will go back in its case too soon I fear. It looks like the Les Paul will be my new guitar, not by choice, but by necessity. That's IF I decide to be a guitar strummer instead of a real player. (Alright, I can hear you guitar players out there yelling: "You idiot! Don't you know the Les Paul is one of the most sought after guitars in the history of rock music? You don't appreciate what you've got!" Yes- indeed I do appreciate the instrument. But it is famous for it's sustain- the ability to hold a note or chord, not its tone, which is usually generated by utilizing effects boxes and amplifier settings.)
I just miss the ability to really play, play hard, play solos, dig deep into the music. My strumming sounds about like it did back in college, albeit with more chords from which to choose. Nothing to brag about.
And I can still play drums. I could always be someone's drummer. But there goes my songwriting. Ever try to write a song using drums? I bet Mick Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) couldn't even do that.
Jimmy Buffett is a strummer. Lots of singer/ songwriters are strummers. They hire good guitar players to do the "heavy lifting"- the solos, etc. I guess I could do the same. So maybe the music business (or hobby) isn't over just yet for me. But it has changed, that much is real. I have to face facts.
I still haven't seen a spinal specialist because I fear their only answer would be surgery. I would probably consider surgery on my neck, if it will return all feeling to previous times. This is still kind of new to me; getting used to having trouble buttoning shirts, loading a memory card in my camera, or even cutting my fingernails on my right hand is all hard to do. I still do projects (-yesterday Deb helped me make three aluminum clad outside extension cords, which I placed by crawling on my belly to different corners under the porch,) and yard work, etc. And I can hang to a 24 foot ladder with my left hand while using the right to cut vines off our chimney with a hedge trimmer. But I can't really play guitar anymore. I waited three months before I notified our bass player that it was over and canceled my band's web site. That's life. Stuff happens. Let's just hope one of the things that dies isn't my involvement with music.

My Childrens' Childrens' Children- October 28, 2007

The above photo shows me holding my first grandchild, Dagen, less than a couple hours after his birth. I've got over a dozen spots freshly frozen on my face by a dermatologist. It seems that all those years suntanning, playing sports, swimming, water skiing, and working in the sun can add up to skin cancer, especially in blondes, redheads, or folks with blue eyes. I've learned my lesson about the sun's harmful effects; I now wear a cap or sunscreen on my face when outside for any length of time. We HAVE to learn from our mistakes. But more about that later.
I really didn't mind turning over my classroom to a much younger, new teacher when I retired. I emptied all four file cabinets, 31 years worth of teaching, into boxes which I placed on the counters of the copy room across the hall from my room. Most of the boxes contained copies of worksheets, study sheets, quizzes and tests I handmade for my students, hours, weeks, years of late night labor. I wanted the new teacher (and any remaining teachers) to have an opportunity to save loads of time by utilizing my previous work. My other choice was to cart all of it to the dumpster around back. I chose to lay it all out, my work, my career, my "soul"- if you will, on the chance someone might want it. I did this after much reflection. You see, our previous department chairwoman had retired a couple years earlier and had left nothing behind, not even an offer to come get what we wanted of hers, despite the fact she had a lifetime of nice work to offer. I guess I sort of resented her doing that, and I was determined to do the opposite.
On July 19, 2007, my lovely daughter gave birth to my first grandchild. His name is Dagan Parker Felts, son of Diane and Tate Felts, born at Outer Banks Hospital, NC. He weighed in at 7 pounds 4 ounces and was 20 inches long. Deb and I were near for the delivery, along with my ex-wife, her hubby, Tate's parents and his sister. It was a regular party! The delivery, Diane's first, went pretty smoothly. Debbie and I stayed at Tate and Diane's home for the night (along with everyone except Diane,) then revisited her and Dagan the next day before heading back home. Mommy and baby are both healthy and doing well.
It's been 3 months since then, and I've been trying to find a handle on how Dagan's birth has effected me. I look forward to spending some time with the little feller, teaching him how to fish off our dock, pulling him behind my boat on the big, inflated donut some passerby "donated" last boating season. Maybe I'll teach him to play drums or guitar, if we get to spend serious time together. Perhaps, as Jimmy Buffett sings, "teach him how to fuss, teach him how to cuss, and pull a cork out of a bottle of wine." But what I really want him to know is that life is good, full of beauty, and worth living, despite the signs to the contrary.
My brother and his wife divorced over the issue of having children. She heard her biological clock ticking down and "demanded" children. Dave was not yet ready to bring a new life into the world as he saw it. Though Dave could put Michael John, our son, on his shoulders and go trapesing off around our Virginia farm for hours, he just didn't think this world was stable enough to raise kids of his own. He tended to classify folks as either "good" or "evil." And, in his view, the evil predominated. So he went very sadly through his divorce. Keep in mind that Dave had gone through the same childhood I had: an Air Force Lt. Col. father that physically and (more importantly) emotionally abused him for his first 17 years. Nothing we did ever satisfied our father, the most judgemental, opinionated, and demanding person I have ever known. Dave, I'm sure, saw a little of our father in himself, enough to scare him away from having kids of his own. He was smart enough to know that he too could end up an abuser. Add to that a pessimistic view of life and people in it and you can easily see why Dave just wasn't ready for children at age 27.
I've spent a third of my life proving my father wrong. I'm not stupid, like he almost daily said I was. I'm not the sharpest pencil in the pack, but I did graduate from Florida State, and I did manage to get on the Dean's List a couple times. Education quickly teaches a person that if they were abused, they stand a great chance of abusing their own children. I purposely chose to not beat my children as we were beaten. I purposely chose to daily tell my children I loved them, unlike my father who never uttered those words to us. I raised my children almost the exact opposite of the way we were raised for a reason: so they wouldn't have to undergo the insecurities, lack of self-esteem, and feelings of inadequacy we had. It worked. My son is doing fine, still looking for that next great "gig" playing drums, but has a college degree in his pocket, a talented girlfriend, and a nice day job. My daughter is doing fine, too. She has her degree, a job in real estate, her license, a great husband, and a wonderful baby boy to keep her busy for awhile.
How does all this tie- in to my feelings about my first grandchild? There is hope for the future of us as individuals, families, and as a nation. There is hope even for this planet, if we do not allow it to be blown up by overzealous politicians. We have to learn from our past mistakes. Someone once said, "Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Eveyone makes mistakes, but only a true fool keeps making the same ones. I taught that to all my English students (by way of enticing them to make corrections in their writings.) I want to teach it to my grandson, too. I guess I'm not done teaching yet.