Young man lost

On Saturday April 26, a senior at Manasquan High School stepped in front of a train in his hometown of Spring Lake. He was an honor student, sports captain, and all-around, well-liked boy. Here's the brief, and the obituary. I hope tomorrow's Coast Star, our local paper, will have some more detailed information. Some students I spoke, who knew him at the school, said they were shocked; they never saw it coming. Maybe others, family perhaps, did. I don't know.
What I do know is that it is unacceptable.
Certainly we do not accept suicide. But it happens, and it's happening more often than we'd like. I said yesterday, while giving a presentation in my Content Literacy class on Into the Wild, that I've come to the realization that during my time as an educator, one of my students will probably commit suicide and others will add to a national drop-out rate that continues to rise. (My professor confirmed that she'd had a student suicide during her teaching career and statistics she calculated said we'd probably all have one.)
It just seems amazing that our society can look at these problems, along with depression and a slew of other mental disorders, and shrug as if to say, "well, I guess that's life."
When are we going to realize that our pursuits are in vain? That we're chasing an unattainable goal and killing ourselves in the process?
Dr. Quinn (not the medicine woman) talks about this a lot, the idea of disenchantment, but it's always alarming to see it in practice. Give someone a hug today. It may be corny, but just do it ... please.

On Education

This month in my recurring monthly letter to the editor I took a shot at defending the public education system. School budget and board of education voting has just passed, and after hearing enough negativity about the schools, like on the Brielle Forum, I decided to enter the foray. I'm not sure what we think the point of public education, or even private, is anymore, but it seems it's become something kids do daily to take tests, get a diploma, get into a college, and get a job. In other words, it's become something to promote the system. I didn't get that blunt or societally negative in my letter.
But there is something to be said about our priorities and how our increasing perception of ourselves as rulers of our little individual kingdoms has only forced more divides between the people of our society. Also, I don't understand the negativity toward educators. In a society where we value people according to the amount of money they're paid, it's alarming that educators are near the bottom.
Anyway, take a read and let me know what you think.

(...)

A few years ago a commercial aired depicting a staring match between two ethnically-diverse boys. Gradually, fellow students amass behind them, as if to watch and assist their blinkless classmate. A roar erupts from the Asian group, a groan from the Caucasians, as the White boy’s concentration falters. The shot pans away as students clamber to their seats in two distinct classrooms and you realize that the playfully-competing students are actually worlds apart.
The ad’s purpose, of course, is to sell a fancy television with video conferencing capabilities used in the business and political world. The pie-in-the-sky implication is that this scene could actually be played out in our classrooms. Could you imagine if our students had a personal relationship with Middle-Eastern schoolchildren, for instance? What would that do for their global perceptions? Would a Middle-Eastern student second-guess his/her decision to join Al Qaeda if he/she had a personal relationship with the infidels?
I’m dreaming of course (?), but that’s my point: fancy televisions are more prevalent in our homes then our schools. We’ll allow ourselves to dream big in our individual lives, but place limits on what services and materials our educators want to utilize. Come February, Uncle Sam is all but requiring that you buy that television to watch MTV Cribs, and I wonder how that will affect school budgets.
A surprising majority of budgets passed last week, and that was awesome and maybe a hopeful sign. Next year, like every year, will the fight over public education will be as predictable as the daffodils’ bloom?
Have we forgotten the purpose of public education: to reflect and teach the knowledge and values of our society? Do educators enter the field for any other purpose than to show children how to communicate, how their bodies work, how our society works, or how to evoke their inner being? Unlike most other “needs”, public education is not a business that reaps a profit nor does it exist purely for the benefit of the individual. Public education is vital to our society’s advancement and existence.
If we want to discuss societal problems like substance abuse, energy dependence, global warming, or anything else that a new President will change next year, then we have to do so as a society. We cannot do that if we pit the one thing whose function is to enrich and improve society in a staring match against individual materialism. On average, we were asked to sacrifice one spa treatment, one designer outfit, gas to drive one mile per day, two professional lawn services, or one Aquafina bottle per week. One material thing is more important than keeping our societal education up to par?
The next time public educators ask for the same luxuries as private homes, before we call them greedy, lazy and petty for reminding us that education is about children (otherwise, what’s its purpose?), let’s start by acknowledging the real problem: we’re addicted to ourselves.
Hi; my name is Andrew, and I’m a recovering selfaholic.

Philly mess

No, this isn't about the recently-completed Democratic Presidential primary yesterday.
I went to the Mets game at Citizen's Bank Park Sunday night against the Phillies and I don't think I've seen a more depressed group of people; maybe when looking at Dust Bowl / Great Depression pictures. There had to be something mentally wrong with these people, or else they just think the point of paying money to attend a ballgame is to get drunk on $7 beers and shout every explicative and derogatory phrase they've ever heard.
Of course, I had my Edgardo Alfonzo #13 jersey on, and none of the fans knew who Fonzy was because they could barely assemble a competitive team in the mid and late 1990s, so that didn't help the atmosphere. And my brother had his David Wright jersey on, but neither of us engaged with the fans at all, so they said they their unintelligible slop and moved on.
I guess there was a huge fight Saturday afternoon that actually spilled onto the field, but here are three scenes I saw Sunday night:

1. Two fans start berating each other with words relating to sexual orientation. Apparently this has nothing to do with the Mets or Mets fans. Closer examination shows that they are both Philly fans AND are both wearing Chase Utley jerseys.
2. One Philly fan is so drunk that he goes from cursing the Mets fans behind him, to standing for an entire inning screaming expletives into his cellphone but also, somehow, at the Mets fans, to being booed by fellow Philly fans, to getting himself and his three buddies ejected from the game.
3. A poor father sitting a few seats over from me brings his four, maybe five year old daughter to the game and has to hold her ears most of the time. Being a father of an up-and-coming Mets fan, I couldn't have felt more uncomfortable for that guy.

"Stuff" and "Into the Wild"

On the advice of My Cohort, I finally sat down and watched The Story of Stuff Saturday morning. Actually, I stood up and watched it as my wireless's best connection was by the window. Aside from the aroma of Calvin's masticated food wafting up my nose early in the morning, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I immediately recognized the value of "Stuff" when Annie said our society's expecting a linear system to operate in a finite space indefinitely. Being an aspiring math teacher, this was music to my ears. Probably since the third reading of Ishmael and the first of The End of Nature, my view of our "situation" has been filled with images of graphs and areas and other mathematical representations that model the problems we're facing. The viewing gave me tremendous inspiration to put this video into my classroom and really show some applicable connections of math to life.
The parts that spoke the most to me were the mentions of how society has bought into the system and has turned "keeping up with the times" into the moral and popular thing to do. I loved hearing how the heels of women's shoes aren't researched for effectiveness; they're changed year to year to keep the shoe designers in business and new products on the shelves. I've argued in our local paper for a year now (yes, my voice is new to this arena) that our energy and environmental troubles are partially solvable by our own actions. Yet, we rely on the government to make changes for us and blame huge corporations for pollution while not doing anything ourselves to make a difference.
I'm not giving the government a pass by any stretch, but supply is driven by demand, and if we didn't demand more, more, more, we'd be in a better persuasive position over the government and corporations to make change themselves. We don't have to build bigger homes, drive bigger cars, commute all over God's creation, fertilize the hell out of our lawns, bow to bottled water, or cycle through electronics and home goods like they're going out of style, but unfortunately we do believe things are going out of style and we'll die if we don't keep up with them.

(---)

Jessie and I watched Into the Wild that night and it was a great addendum to the Story of Stuff rhetoric earlier in the day. (As an aside, Jessie watched "Stuff" in the afternoon, and unfortunately was feeding Greysen at the same time. Watch, and you'll know why it was a little uncomfortable (there's a drawing of a woman with skull-and-crossbones for breasts)). Into the Wild is easily one of Jessie's favorite books, and I am currently halfway through the text myself. We've heard from friends who've read it, and the sentiment is certainly a theme in Jon Krakauer's text, that Chris McCandless was a nutt, lunatic, idiot, and moron for running away from society and subjecting himself to uncertain peril. There are those who feel he was mentally unstable and should have been more respectful of his parents than to leave them unaware of his situation. As a lover and appreciator of my family, I may agree with the latter to an extent.

But to suggest that McCandless was anything but a rational, albeit overzealous, person is preposterous. This explanation for his decision to tackle Alaska and expel worldly possessions seems purely driven by the cultural mindset that we all are supposed to be robotic consumers and our purpose in life is to claim and attain. There are so many youth out there who are suddenly becoming blindsided by this cultural mindset that, after spending 15 years of relative joy as an unencumbered, responsibility-less person, the rest of their life will be spent working to the hilt accumulating possessions that will never be enough for society's approval. College is no longer about furthering an education in an area they desire (if it ever was) but rather about finding a job they can tolerate that will pay them well. They have been taught that possessions and things will give them happiness, but have failed to see that they are not happy now, and will never have enough things or enough of the right things to make them truly happy.

That is where The Story of Stuff gets its influence and inspiration: by exposing and breaking apart this machine that pads the pockets of those at the top while making those at the bottom toil for its success. McCandless may not have understood the linear system proposed by "Stuff". But he did know how meaningless material possessions were, and he did understand how they tore apart his family. His only mistake was believing that he could find happiness on his own (despite making many valuable personal contacts on his brief journey), a mistake he acknowledges sadly in his final moments.

We can't do this on our own, but together, we can move mountains (not just blow them up).

Like a Pirate in a Restaurant

They say a man should always dress for the job he wants. So why was I dressed up like a pirate in a restaurant, you ask? Well, it was all because this hacker stole my identity, and so I had to go in every evening to sell chowder and iced tea.
I should have gone to free credit report dot com. I would have seen it coming at me like an atom bomb. They'd monitor my credit and give me email alerts, so I wouldn't end up selling fish to tourists in tee shirts.
So the question for free credit report dot com is: Why do I have to feel like a schmuck if I want to sell fish to tourists in tee shirts? How come waiter or waitress is not considered a legitimate profession? If these people are such low-lifes or losers, what does it say about the people that rely on them to serve them food?

We have an image problem in our culture, and we no longer feel that people should have a service profession as their career. We're infatuated with career, and everybody has to be something when they grow up, and make a name for themselves. It's along the same lines as the comparison between renting and owning a home; renters suck and are worthless if you were wondering.
But we have an increasingly stricter template to choose careers from. They say the immigration problem is driven by the amount of jobs that are available that Americans don't want.
Why don't Americans want certain jobs? What's wrong with being a landscaper? A dishwasher? A house cleaner?
There's more to this, including the hierarchy we follow and the amount of influence money has on our culture (and I'm especially brief because I'm strapped for time but am making a concerted effort to maintain a daily rhetoric). But we don't allow people to be happy with 'bottom-rung' jobs or even feel useful in society if they maintain these positions. We hold doctors and lawyers and CEOs and athletes with the highest regard, and it shows with the amount of money paid to each of these people.

But why do people bitch about teachers getting "summer's off" but say nothing about athletes whose season lasts 5 months?

Broad Street Blitz

I found myself outside, walking, for the first time last year after having my gal bladder removed. I was en route to meet Jessie downtown, and a mile walk was good for my rehabbing body. Chances are, I was looped on a painkiller at the time, and these suspicions were justified with the forthcoming list's presence on the back of an oxycodone description sheet.

• hanger
• blue solo cup
• dog poop
• cigarette butt
• 7-11 coffee cup
• pen (empty)
• plastic clothing tag
• cigarette butt
• Full Throttle can (crushed)
• Coors Light can (smashed)
• plastic bottle safety seal

The question I posed to my medicated self was: "What's the problem: No trash cans or no self control?

What you mention, Willbergh, outside your store window is alarming, and I laughed when I read about the McDonald's bag because I just saw one today, full, in Monmouth's parking lot and used similar references in a letter a few months ago: Sanity Amidst Ignorance. I don't know what the answer is either, but there's a few things we've discussed that speak to the cause.

1. There's an obvious disconnect between humans and the environment. For the most part, this isn't the 1980s and Billy Joel's not lamenting about syringes in the ocean. I actually remember being banned from some beaches because of polution, and it was unfortunate that it took something that severe or alarming to alert people to the situation. But people did actually see what happened when we were careless.
2. There's certainly a lack of responsiblity. The only people you see picking up trash have orange jump suits. We're very much a culture that throws its hands to the air and plays the role of Bart as the I Didn't Do It Boy. It's always somebody else's problem.
3. There's not enough time to be responsible. People have way too many other things going on to be globally responsible, and many times it's more time efficient to be sloppy. I need look no farther than the clothes pile next to my bed to illustrate that.
4. And the saddest thing ... it's not our problem. Like I said yesterday, it's going to be our girls' problem, if not their kids or their kids. We definitely define our as "people who live from now until I'm dead." There is very little thought toward our ancestors, and it's a shame considering the high regard with which we hold our Founding Fathers. We believe they made decisions and sacrifices for us, meaning you and me and everybody (alive NOW).

Maybe that's it. Maybe we need to believe that we are the new Founding Fathers!

The Wayne's World Effect

I remember as a little kid being nervous about spitting on the ground because somewhere in my brief social education I was told that it was illegal. Whether that was true or not, I have no idea. But still to this day whenever I contemplate hocking a loog, I ask myself if it's really necessary, or right, or appropriate.
It's a small, probably meaningless, act, but nonetheless, every time I spit, a little conversation about social appropriateness runs through my head.
I bring this up because I get borderline nauseaus when someone tosses a cig butt onto the ground. Butt tossing has become something that people don't even think twice about anymore. Whereas I used to think before every time (maybe a slight exaggeration) I spat, I can't imagine that people actually rationalize their decision to dispose of their waste so casually and carelessly. If they did, if they actually took time to ask themselves if throwing their butt on the ground was their best option, then why did they choose "Yes"? What other option was worse than that?
This is important because I don't believe people think about decisions as small as this anymore. I don't believe that most smokers take time to decide what to do with their butts any more than a knee decides to do when tapped with a pointy hammer. Littering has become second nature, almost a motor reflex of sorts.

(---)

A friend mentioned a conversation he had with a friend of his, recently, on a drive while smoking a cigarette. He said he'd never taken much thought to people's decision to casually toss a spent butt out the window when finished, but felt compelled to advise his copilot not to. They found an empty water bottle and made good use of it.
The seemingly insignificant scene resulted in a lengthy conversation about waste and polution between two people who'd never engaged in such a conversation before. It seemed for that one moment, a mind had been changed. My friend and I wondered what his companion did the next time he was in the car, smoking a cig. Did their previous drive have any lasting impressions, or did the next cig find a place on the curb?
I guess that's the only hope we can all have as warriors against ignorance and apathy: the Wayne's World Effect. It's the hope that if we convince one person, then they'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends. It's the same way we got into this mess in the first place; someone convinced someone else that one thing was right and they believed it.
Damn there's a lot of $h!t to clean up.