Quick Notes from a Road Trip East: Friday, June 21

In Murraysville PA the Word and Worship Church and the Beer Arena share the same warehouse-like building along the Rt 22 corridor. A bit further east, in another community, you can board your cat or dog at The Pet Ho-Tail...a facility whose name (say it out loud) suggests it ought to be located far south of anywhere you might buy beer and worship Jesus under the same roof.

Learned the tragic story of the Johnstown Flood, including how the über-rich's carelessness that practically foreordained it excused themselves from responsibility for the consequences of their carelessness by calling the disaster an act of God.  Then visited the Flight 93 Memorial, and recalled that its perpetrators claimed to be doing the will of God. Wonder how God likes being blamed for all manner of human evil.

Burgers and Beer and a Martini, Too

A man I judged to be about 75 years old stood at the door, looking into the casual restaurant on Burgers and Beer night...$5 burgers, $3 beers.  He had fulsome white hair, bright eyes, and appeared to be in good health–for a man of his age, as our kindly world likes to put it.

What I noticed about him was how badly his clothes fit him. Maybe he was losing weight and putting off buying new clothes until he reached his desired goal. Or perhaps he just didn't care, was unaware and unconcerned. His sport shirt was a tent stuffed into bubble pants, all held together in the middle by his belt.  His could double his waist size and still be comfortable in that outfit. Something told me he wasn't homeless, so I doubt his apparel came from the Salvation Army or a thrift store.

He turned and left.

A few minutes later a woman, perhaps in her late 60's or early 70's, walked through that same door. She was savagely stunning. Straight white hair framed her over-made-up face. She was dressed in what appeared to be a designer outfit from the likes of Nordstrom or better, the top a little too small, the skirt a little too short, and all of it a little too fitted. Heavy gold necklaces encircled her neck and gold orbs hung from her earlobes. 

And he was right beside her, showing the way to their table.

We passed by that table as we left. I noticed she was washing down her burger with a martini. I didn't see what he was drinking–maybe a diet cola?

Unlikely couple...I wonder what they share when not in public.

It IS Complicated!

Corporate person in disguise AT&T is bombarding us and our kids with false information.

In a video ad, actor Beck Bennett–he seems to be a person in fact–asks very young children three seemingly uncomplicated questions to which they give uncomplicated answers which, taken together, lead to an uncomplicated conclusion: buy phone and internet service from (you guessed it!) AT&T.

Q1: "What's better, faster or slower?" A1: "Faster."

Q2: "What's better, doing two things at once, or just one?" A2: "Two."

Q3: "Is saving money better than not saving money?" A3: "Yes."

So simple. So uncomplicated. And so horribly misleading. And just plain so wrong.

Q1: "Faster or slower"? The right answer depends wholly upon what you are talking about. Is fast food better than slow food? Is driving faster better than driving slower? Is it better to make an important decision quickly or to give it some thought? Would you rather speed-read great literature or take time with it? Is allegro better than adagio?

Q2: "Do two things at once"? Studies show we cannot "do two things at once." If we are doing two things we are dividing our attention and our skill-sets into half, actually alternating between doing each of those two things, doing each of them one at a time. Are such back-and-forth exercises the best way to do anything, especially things that matter? Usually not. Ever try to teach math facts to a fifth-grader who is texting her best friend?

Q3: Saving money is often a good thing. Except when you buy a piece of junk that doesn't last a year when spending a little more would have bought you something that might last five years. Or when you feed your kids cheap food that harms their health. Or when a tanking economy needs you to spend your money.

Or, I take it, when you spend your money on AT&T phone and internet service.

AT&T is exploiting the minds of young children to take advantage of them and of the rest of us who are to be hoodwinked by their apparently innocent truthfulness. It is playing a childish game with consumers' ability to think clearly, spreading simple lies as if there were simple truths. What's it is doing is not complicated: in the best traditions of American enterprise it is bamboozling the public to sell snake oil.

AT&T is acting like a person: a complicated, deceptive, partial-truth-telling person out to take us for all we are worth. How would Alexander Graham Bell answer its message?

Apple Opens Pandora's Box?

I think I learned yesterday a little bit about how Pandora chooses the music you like. It apparently happens when computers, aided by people, listen to what you listen to, whir it through the stuff that’s inside those computers (and people, I guess), and spits it out to you as your own playlist and even as your very own radio station which going forward will play only music you like based on what you’ve liked in the past.

You can even have more than one personal radio station...one guy said he had a hundred of them. I don’t know if he likes only one kind of music so they all play the same kinds of songs, or if he likes a hundred kinds of music (I lose count at about a dozen, but I’m old), each of them with its own station. My mind is blown.

Anyway, the question I have is are people letting someone or something else choose the music they will like in the future? That seems very strange to me. Are they afraid they might–God forbid!–have to listen to something they don’t immediately like? I have been used to choosing what I like and don’t like, and have to admit my prejudices don’t allow me to spend a lot of energy trying to listen to things I am sure I will never like. But that’s me deciding, not some geek presiding over geek equipment in Silicon Valley.

I learned all this because Apple is about to get into the same business as Pandora. A complex extension of what iTunes does already, I guess, in creating “Genius” mixes. Sounds far removed from Steve Jobs’ celebrated creative spirit. Strange world we are hurtling toward.

Nature Mentors Her Own

I was focused on getting my garden in when a commotion in the tangle of trees and shrubs about 50 feet to my west–beyond our grassy open yard–demanded my attention. I looked up in time to see what I think was a hawk hurtling through the undergrowth. Something was dangling from its talons. Its powerful beating wings brushing the branches as it escaped with its prey made a startling noise. Seconds earlier the predator's presence had been shrouded in silence. Now, for one more second I stood watching the suddenly visible apparition fly into hiding.

A cacophony of bird chirps and calls began. Something was clearly wrong. That noise gradually subsided into a single series of chirps that continued for several minutes. To me they sounded like a robin when an intruder approaches her nest. Chirp....chirp....chirp....until finally, silence again–the mourning, the keening complete. I reflected on nature's ways: a hawk's offspring, perhaps, feeding upon a robin's. I turned back to my garden.

Not ten minutes later I looked up again and saw a small robin family making its way across the grassy area between the scene of the abduction and me. An adult male led the procession. He seemed uninterested in eating; he looked to me to be watching for danger. Behind him an adult female was followed by a juvenile. She was hunting food, cocking her head toward the ground to see grubs and worms and whatever else falls victim to robins' foraging. The trailing adolescent chirped impatiently until mother picked up a morsel in her beak and turned to put it in his or hers. I think the child was learning how to find its own food by watching her example.

I watched the trio for several minutes, wondering if moments before there had been four in this family. What if these parents had just lost a child and the youth, a sibling? Was their period of mourning so quickly over, cut short by the urgency to eat and to learn how to eat? Was it not dangerous for them to be out in the open so soon, or did they somehow sense that the just-satisfied hawk was now less a threat to them, that now was the time to be out and about the business of living? I hoped I would not witness another stealth attack, but they made their way through the grass and back into cover, and I finished my day's gardening chores.

Mentoring teaches how and it teaches when. It teaches the rhythms of risk and opportunity. Nature mentors her own. Can she can teach us the art of mentoring our offspring to learn not only the work of life, but also the timing of living?