Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Program

During my travels and some of the unusual positions I’ve held in my professional life, I’ve gotten to spend a few years working inside of the public school system. One of the phrases I’ve heard repeated many times by educational professionals to their students is that “education is the one thing that no one can take away from you.” The goal, of course, is to assist students in recognizing the value of the education that they are receiving, which is sometimes a considerable challenge, especially in some areas of our country.

There have been many studies of late that reveal that the United States is not doing so well in our educational pursuits…that is, our students perform below students in several other countries in critical areas. Now, let me push aside for a moment the interwoven issues of the unreliability of objective test scores, and the fact that our press for education seems to rely solely on math and science and not on literature or the arts. Permit me to just focus on the fact that, legislative titles notwithstanding, we are, in fact, leaving our children behind.

I’ve seen technology used to great effect in the realm of education, and I’m a huge fan of using whatever means are available to assist students in learning and educators in doing their jobs. Still, with the education of our children and their futures at stake (an especially important consideration for me in my new adventure as a father), I think that placing education dominantly in the hands of technology is a huge mistake.

And letting the students simply see to that education themselves? That sounds like a train wreck.

Yet, apparently that idea seems to be all the rage at this year’s TED conference.

Permit to avoid a long and verbose diatribe about how many ways I see this going wrong, and simply reinforce a lesson that America seems intent upon avoiding, but that I witness to be undeniably true over and over again, both professionally and as a father: We are the adults, and our children are just that: our children. Taking care of them…an endeavor of which their education is only one small but critical component…is our responsibility. Let us use all of the tools at our disposal, but let us make certain that we do it instead of letting our tools attempt to do it for us, and make certain that our children aren’t attempting to do something themselves that they aren’t capable of, nor prepared, to do.

…and the snow begins to soften into rain as the seasons transform…

Distant Deliveries

The awkward part about the location of our new apartment is that we have yet to find a pizza place that will deliver to the address. I’m not really certain as to why…we’re walking distance away from streets of local downtown businesses, but our street is off the magic grid of pizza delivery for our city.

In any case, Karen decided that tonight was a pizza night, and she called me on my way home from class, because the only option is carryout. So, I detoured to the appropriate pizza location and went inside to claim our dinner.

To be greeted by nostalgia.

I grew up in a rural area, and went to school in a town about 20 minutes away. My mother did all of the week’s shopping on Fridays: groceries, household supplies, whatever was necessary was all purchased in the weekly Friday excursion. She made this a special treat for me at the end of the week, as well, by picking me up from school on Friday afternoons about halfway through said shopping excursion, thus eliminating one of my one-hour bus rides for the week. And, we always managed to have fun. Frequently, we took a pizza home on Friday afternoons, arriving just in time as my father got home from work. We always ordered from the same place (my parents are to this day creatures of routine), and it was always carryout, because there was certainly no delivery in the area in which we lived.

So, many Friday afternoons were spent waiting in the restaurant for the pizza to be prepared. Those sorts of routine sounds, sights and smells have a way of making a mark on a child’s memory, and these certainly did (I was later offered a summer job at that same restaurant, and I’m so glad that I already had one and turned it down, because it would have ruined the nostalgia to see such a thing up close).

Fast forward to me leaving for college. There were multiple pizza deliveries within minutes of campus in that much larger city, all of which made a lucrative business of delivering to one’s dorm room. So, delivery ruled. And, it has ever since. Karen and I have always been quite used to ordering delivery on evenings when we don’t feel like cooking.

I think that, in becoming so accustomed to deliveries, that I’ve lost something of the memory that I once had. Standing in that pizza restaurant tonight, listening to the sounds and smelling the scents, listening to a grandmother help her grandchildren in choosing their order behind me, I was transported back momentarily to those Friday afternoons of my childhood.

My childhood was far from perfect, but it had its moments.

I know that we’ll make memories like this with and for our daughter, and I know that they may very well be the unintentional ones…like the pizza restaurant for me…that make some of the biggest impressions. Perhaps one day she’ll write about what they were and I’ll get to enjoy reliving them. In any case, this is yet another moment when I’m learning to not let convenience overpower an appreciation for the goodness of life when it was just a bit slower.

The Value of Inspiration

I’ve never claimed to be a visual artist.

I tried, mind you, when I was young, just as all children try their hands at drawing and painting. At the end of the day, though, while my drawing was a bit of an obsession for a while, my true sensitivity turned out to be auditory in nature, not visual. I think that’s why I’m a writer, because I hear the sounds of the words on the page the way they would be spoken. I’m just visual enough to do layout designs, which I’ve done in print and on the web, and I’ve done some scenic design work for the stage. I’ve done some lighting design, as well, but to draw or paint something beautiful on a blank canvas…that’s just not my gift.

Still, I’ve been friends with a great many visual artists over the course of my life, and I know how to appreciate the visual mediums. I’ve developed a taste for “what I like,” and Karen and I have occasional fun matching our disparate tastes in visual aesthetics into a cohesive interior design. I find visual art inspiring for my writing. I’ve found some visual work on Tumblr that had a great impact on the character development of a major character in my work-in-progress.

I was thinking about this along the lines of when I see steampunk art or cosplays. I’ve never read anything in the genre, but seeing the art makes me want to read the genre. In fact, seeing the art makes me want to try my hand at writing it, as well, at some point in the future.

All that to say, it’s wonderful to see how one medium informs another. Our inspiration has to come not only from within our own medium or even our own genre, but from wildly different ones, as well.

Go looking. Stay inspired.

Belated Valentine’s Day Musings

Karen and I have an arrangement.

That arrangement is to observe Valentine’s Day more carefully than our anniversary. This isn’t because of any serious date conflict, as our anniversary falls in the summer. Rather, it’s because that Valentine’s Day is an anniversary of its own, the anniversary of our first date.

After having talked for a couple of weeks on a social network that was respectable at the time, we had lunch on campus at the university where were both grad students. We made arrangements to go out the following Tuesday, and it was that weekend that my co-workers reminded me that the following Tuesday was Valentine’s Day. How stupid to go out on a date with a girl you really like but had only just met on that most romantic day of the year? You have to play it just right…not overboard, but not ignoring the event, either. I could have bored her, or I could have scared her away.

Fortunately, I did neither, and six months later we were married. So, we’ve always been very careful to observe Valentine’s Day, as it was quite truthfully the evening that we first fell in love.

Last year’s Valentine’s was our first with out daughter. After making plans to have a family member watch her, our daughter wasn’t feeling well, and neither, truthfully, were either of us, so we stayed home and watched an old black and white movie. Nothing overly extravagant, but its where we were at the time. This year found us having just moved into a new apartment and, as I’m a full time student for a few more months, not exactly rolling in cash. We were able, though, to order out from one of our favorite restaurants. Then we put our daughter to bed for the night, and watched a movie from one of Karen’s favorite directors, a movie that I took her to see on our honeymoon.

I paused to reflect on where the adventure of life has taken us since that first Valentine’s Day dinner and coffee. We were poor students then, as well, and I don’t think that I could ever have predicted where our adventure would take us. Regardless of how elaborate or simple our Valentine’s Days are in the future, though, I wouldn’t trade that decision that I made, on our first date nonetheless, to propose to this beautiful woman that is my wife.

“It’s an adventure!”is her motto about life, and indeed it has been, is, and will be. I can’t imagine taking this journey without her at my side.

Here’s to many adventures to come!