Socrates Quotes

Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!"

America's gluttony

We're in a recession?
You wouldn't know it traveling down the road. Trash, waste, food, and good merchandise line our roads. Cycling slowly up to Guadalupe National Park, a trash bag lay strewn over the dirt at a car pull out (50 yards from an actual trash bin, I might add). I spot something orange. I tell Charley, my captain of my life and tandem bicycle to stop so that I may check it out. It was a perfect orange, never peeled, never eaten, but thrown away because of America's gluttony. We take it, wash it, and eat one of the sweetest oranges you could imagine.
Our stores constantly sell one-time, one-use items. We no longer make products that will work or last over a period of years. Our children are so accustomed to toys that they will play with a couple of times then leave neglected, then thrown away. Visit Wal-mart and just look around. Yesterday I saw a bubble wand which sold for $1, before Easter they were selling a case of plastic, colored eggs for a similar price. It's not the price, but the gluttony that I am attacking here. These things have minimal use, kids tire of them quickly and where do they end up? In the landfills which contribute to global warming.
We are warm shower hosts for traveling cyclists. European visitors are shocked by the mass of products offered in stores, huge refrigerators and pantries in homes, and the mass of products Americans own. It's not just what we own but what we throw away.
Zipping down the road in a car will often blur the trash beside the roads. Cycling and walking enables a person to take in the immense quantity of things thrown and/or lost along the roadsides: backpacks, golf bags, large bags, medium bags, small bags, purses, cargo straps (never buy another one--just go for a walk or ride), wire, Leatherman multi-tools, Gerber multi-tools, hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, towels, wash cloths, hand towels, coats, pants, shoes, dresses, jackets, just to name a small amount found and seen. These are all things we did NOT see in Europe.
Oh, and the plastic bags--what are we doing? I stand in the store and watch how we continually stand in line, bagless, and let the clerks place our purchased items in plastic bags. Maybe these bags will get another use at home as a garbage sack, but will inevitably either end up, again, in a landfill contributing to the demise of our planet, or as an eye sore along the roadside that even a passenger in a car zipping down the road can see.

If we are truly in a recession, shouldn't we be more frugal, shouldn't we be more careful, shouldn't we save?

Happiness and success

Everyone has a different definition for these to states of being. But I see them as one and the same. Not that success is happiness but that happiness is success. You can get caught in the upward spiral of constantly achieving new levels of education, positions of employment, and/or the position in society itself. Ah, the push, the grind, the pressure to be recognized as successful. For then, ‘they’ will love me. Society, now that’s a big one. People are so concerned what other people think of them. Maybe my mother actually helped me. She never really liked me and told me that she wished that I was never born. That was her favor to me. I knew I could not please her. I mean, I tried for a long time while I was growing up, but there was this point, a point of no return, that I knew that to continue trying would be fruitless and that I needed to please myself. Well, maybe I wasn’t so insightful I didn’t need anyone. Pleasing someone has its own happy rewards also. Finding the love of my life probably helped also. But truly the real level of success is when you recognize satisfaction of where and who you are.

If success is happiness, I could not have done what I’ve done twice in my life: leave a respected level in society for a happier avenue for myself. The last time has landed me here, very early retirement for myself, to be beside the man I love and about to bicycle (waltz) across Texas. I believe that when one achieves happiness, then they are successful. Look into your inner desires and see what it is you want, look at your choices. It is within you, not outside of you. Is that not what insight or even Nirvana, for that matter?

Backgrounds

For every foreground there is a background. Both are separate and related, interact to communicate.

Let me show you my family portrait. Close your eyes and picture it. I am the painting and the colors on it are my life. My background is dark, gloomy, with chaotic drunken swirls, full of anger, depression, frustration. The flows and swirls, in itself are caught in this repetition, an eddy in a rushing river. As you look closer, you notice that there are two distinct dark colors, full of violence and rage. Two other forms emerge from those patterns. The first one, my sister, is more stable, colors are still somber but take on lighter shades. The second pattern, my brother, is barely distinguishable; dark, moody and sucking in lighter colors surrounding it.

Then a third pattern emerges, me, sharp bright edges contrasting the background. Colors are bright and happy. This pattern should be in a painting with rainbows, meadows, and sunshine. What is it doing in this painting? What is the artist trying to communicate? How could this background create this image? Yet, here it is.

The luminous image attracts other phosphorescent hues and lifts off the canvas, creating a new sensation, a new life, a new and distinct painting.

The painting represents the family from which I emerged. A smiley baby transformed into an optimistic individual placed initially on a dark canvas leaving behind the gloom and attracting new and happy people. How did I come to be?

How does your background affect your evaluation of the underlying images of my painting? We each carry our own background with us through life. Does the background of your life aid or hinder your understanding my life?

How does a background affect a painting? In that respect, how does a background affect a picture? Is it in the eye of the beholder? Then how does the background affect the eye of the beholder? How does the background affect the beholder's attitude? How does the background affect life? How does the beholder's attitude affect the background?

Dream

I was going through my computer and found this. It was an intense dream I woke up from March 3, 2007. It had a good lesson and I'm glad I wrote it down:

I woke up with this dream this morning. I was chasing this doctor who had a terminal disease. But he wasn’t listening to me. He was worried about his things, his possessions. I kept telling him over and over again that he needed to stop and pay attention to what was happening to him now. Listen to the world. Enjoy the moment, the breeze through the leaves of the trees, the birds singing, and his own breath. But he kept telling me that it was me who didn’t understand. He stopped and told me to wait outside this Greek style building while he went inside to take care of something. While I waited, I watched a bull get spooked by passersby. He ran up to me, knocked me over and was about to stomp his hoof into my chest as I began to tell him that he had a choice. “Pretty boy, you’re such a pretty boy. Do you really want to do this? You have a choice. You could lie down beside me and let me pet your pretty face or you could go ahead and stomp my chest. You’re such a pretty boy, don’t you want me to pet your pretty face? Then the bull dropped to the side and lay down beside me and I stroked his face. He was a very pretty bull. I got up and walked toward the building. An older lady was coming from around the corner. I’ve dreamt of her before. She said that I was her sister counter circle; I was on one end going around and she was on the other end and our ends would meet. But her time was coming near to the end as she was growing old and her apprentice would meet me. Her apprentice was this young blonde who fretting over the fact that she was not yet ready. I told her not to worry and that when the time came, she would be ready. Her choice was to either fret about the moment or absorb what she needed to know. The doctor came out, still worrying about things; I again chased after him, because this was my choice, telling him to stop and look at his life and see what is really important.

Enjoy the moment and look at your choices.

Antiquated systems

The electoral system is outdated. In this day and age where electronic equipment and communication devices have immediate feedback to the public, why are we still using this system.

In the beginning, when our Founders set this in motion, communication was slow and you needed the representatives to travel and cast their votes representing their area of the country. But this is no longer the case.

Everyone was so dissatisfied with the past eight Bush Administration years; yet, it is because of the electoral system he was elected for his first term in office; he did not get the majority of the popular vote. Of course, he wasn't going to get rid of this antiquated system.

I live in Texas. Texas, as a whole voted Republican and therefore, McCain received the electoral votes for the state. This makes me, in the end feel like my vote got lost in the shuffle, since I voted for the winner. In fact, my city in the far southwest tip of Texas, always votes Democratic (that is probably why the rest of Texas tends to ignore us). Is this why so many people feel left out when they vote.

Do these numbers really look equitable? At last count, Obama won by 349 electoral votes, McCain 162 and in contrast Obama won by 62,450,844 to McCain's 55,393,214 popular votes. When the latter votes are posted, that is when my vote is truly represented.

Usually, the electoral system has worked, as in this case. But when it doesn't we end up with things like we just left, where Bush won electoral votes but not popular vote.

If you want to forget about your personal life, become a teacher.

Ever go to work and forget about the rest of your life?

That's what happens when I taught. I used to go in early just to get some quiet time to think and organize, because once that bell rang it was go, go, go until the end of the day. Checking in involved visiting different stations to pick up, collect, and check out. Sometimes I had to make a personal call during the day, you know, doctor's appointments or other stuff, but on my way home I would always discover that I forgot. If a teacher has a more traditional schedule, the bell rings, class is seated, roll is taken (that's where the money come from), pass out graded papers, review a previous lesson's ideas, a new lesson is taught, we practice the concept together as a whole, then give homework. Then the bell rings and it happens all over again. This is repeated over and over again until the end of the day. If you're lucky, you have a planning period to grade, personally analyze student's progress, and plan for the next lesson. Every minute of the day involved dealing with students' success, failure, behavior, planning for the next lesson, making personal notes of what lesson delivery was the best, grading papers, and the last five years involved putting up with increasing administrative blah-blah.

Sure, there are a few lazy teachers, but in reality, there are not many. Even the lazy teachers are not the same lazy quality you find in other jobs. There is just too much stimuli to let a person sit back for too long. Yet, 'accountability' treats teachers like they have been lazy and not doing their jobs. To address this idea, administrators are taking the precious little time away from teachers and giving busy work.

All bureaucracy sounds good on paper, but in reality always falls short of what the original intentions were. The district decided that teachers needed to collaborate more and forces 'common' planning. But it's not like we went to the planning meetings and were really able to plan together. NO! We went to the meeting where administrators would feed us the data and give us 'homework' to regurgitate the data back to them. Problem was, everyone, and I mean everyone, was so very busy, that even when the data was strained and drained back into the sewer from where it came, THEY didn't even have time to check to see if it were done properly and in the end everyone knew that it was all a futile effort to make us look busy and productive and the administrators shine.

The district that I retired from invented this INOVA. On paper, it really sounds good. The teacher is given analysis of all past students' test performance so we can analyze weak points and give individualized, personalized lessons and attention to all 180 students we see in a semester in a class of 30-35 students with varying degrees of behaviour etiquette. Now ask me in what manner was this information delivered? One year, it was delivered on a CD in Adobe Acrobat. The teacher had to do a search for the student's name (not student number) (do you know how many different Jose Martinez's there are in a single school in El Paso, TX?) then copy data onto a separate sheet and make teacher goals and comments about that particular student's ability. Last year, the data was printed out in a massive pile (imagine the paper waste and money). We were told to come to our 'forced' common planning meeting with a printed copy of our rosters. We then had to sit and sort through these piles for our students. Most teachers were very good students themselves. They loved the academia world and that is why they returned. They wanted to make a difference. They buy into this mumble jumble that administration cooks up and try to meet the deadlines and perform the Easter-egg hunt. The stress mounts up. Everyone complains but tries to do the fruitless task.

In reality, teachers know their students. Given class time, a few assignments, we know when the student is trying but having trouble, is going to give up, acting out to avoid the difficult, or just plain lazy. We see the handwriting skills, we see the spelling problems. We talk to the students, give encouragement, remind them of their potential, tell them that this is preparation for life beyond school, and these days, tell them that this prepares them for the state school accountability exams. In reality, a class of 30-35 students it is difficult to reach out to that student in a (depending on your school schedule) 55-minute everyday or every-other day for a 90-minute session.

If you do want to forget about your personal life, become a teacher.