PotD
Growing Up Too Fast
October 10, 2015
charles i. letbetter - growing up too fast

charles i. letbetter - growing up too fast

Uh-oh, Dirt; How Did That Get There?

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.—Phyllis Diller

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]All too quickly, our week of baby pictures comes to an end. I could easily go another week or more, but I’ll save those for another time. We need to move on here, just as babies move on with their little lives, growing up right in front of our eyes. Growing up happens much too quickly from a parent’s perspective, and too slowly from the child’s. Growing up is why we take pictures, so we have a record, so we can look back and prove that we really were tiny, cute, and cuddly. While our personalities develop in ways that may make us grumpy and prickly, pictures show us that we were once small, and probably even lovable.

None of us actually remembers growing up. If your parents took a lot of pictures and tell a lot of stories, it can feel like you remember that period of your life, but fortunately, we forget the sensation of sitting in a wet, poopy diaper and being force-fed strained peas. We forget the frustration of being immobile, or the fear of thinking that anything, or anyone, not directly in our line of sight was gone forever. Be thankful we don’t remember trying to put everything we touch into our mouths, or that diaper rash that your mom could never quite get to go away.  Growing up definitely has its advantages.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]When it comes to our own children, though, growing up is something that happens much too quickly. We put  them to bed at night, and wake up the next morning to find they’ve grown two sizes. They go from nursing to demanding pizza in a heart beat. When someone says one of my sons’ names, my first thought is still of them being little and riding on my shoulders. Now, they’re all well over six feet tall and could more easily carry me than I them. Birthdays whiz by at alarming speed and our babies go from playing with cars to driving them.

Watching your kids growing up is challenging not merely because we lose the baby and trade them in for adults, but because all the while they’re growing up, we’re growing old. There’s no escaping either condition, no matter how much skin cream one uses or in how good of shape one stays. By the time our children are grown enough to be out of the house, we’re old enough to be ready to sell it and move to an apartment near a beach. Life is rather cruel that way, isn’t it?

Growing up is inevitable. Growing up happy is a gift. Having pictures to remember it all is a treasure. [/one_half_last]

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PotD
Uncontained Cuteness
October 9, 2015
charles i. letbetter - uncontained cuteness

charles i. letbetter - uncontained cuteness

While On A Walk

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.—Margaret Atwood

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I once heard someone say that Humans would never have survived as a species were it not for the fact our babies come filled with cuteness. Otherwise, ancient parents would have killed them the first time they threw up on mom’s favorite loin cloth, dented dad’s new wheel, or drew on the cave walls. Being cute is a necessity for a child to survive. I’m not sure how much they realize that their ability to live to the ripe old age of ten relies on their cuteness, but it certainly does. Just because we live in a modern, slightly more civilized and allegedly forward thinking age we don’t occasionally think about how nice it would be to sleep past 6:00 AM on a Saturday.

Cuteness isn’t necessarily distributed evenly, though, even among children. Adults don’t like to admit that, but we know it’s true.  Our firstborn had a way about him, an ability to look up at someone with those big blue eyes, and just cause any adult to melt. Neither of his brothers could do that. We still loved the other two, of course, but we didn’t get stopped at the grocery store to compliment them the way we did with the first one. Cuteness comes in varying degrees and some kids get it by the barrel full while other have to quickly learn to either be cute or get used to sitting around in dirty diapers all the time.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Sometimes I think little girls get more of a break in the cuteness department. We  put things in their hair, or if they don’t have hair we give them darling little headbands wth flowers the size of their skull and that distracts adults enough to think the kid is cute. The only accessory a little boy gets is dirt. Even with dirt, though, girls get more attention. Any time a girl gets dirty, it’s cute. When a boy does the same thing, we just dump him in the tub and blame his father.  No one ever likes to think of cuteness being sexist, but it is, and it always has been in most places, excusing those moments in history when being a girl could get you killed.

Most kids hit that period of unrestrained cuteness about the time they’re four months old, and typically hold on to it right up until the point they grab hold of the tablecloth and send the entire Thanksgiving dinner crashing to the floor, or smear lipstick all over Mommy’s new Dior dress, or do something to send the neighbor kid to the hospital in an ambulance.

Cuteness doesn’t last forever, which is a sad thing. I know more than a few adults who would have done well to hold on to theirs.     [/one_half_last]

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PotD
Siblings
October 8, 2015
charles i. letbetter - siblings

charles i. letbetter - Sibling Joy

Hey, Little Brother

If parents are the fixed stars in the child’s universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.—Alison Gopnik

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Siblings are a mixed bag of nuts, is what they are. Your parents reach into a bag and you never know if they’re going to pull out a glorious cashew that will be your best friend forever or one of those huge hazelnuts that everyone leaves in the bottom of the nut bowl. I got lucky, my brother is more of an almond: a little bland at times, but mixes well with others. There is almost five years between us. After having me, the doctor advised my parents that having another was highly unlikely, so we were all happy he made it here, even if it did take forever for him to get big enough to be a good scapegoat,  er, I mean playmate.

Three years separate each of my boys, almost exactly in the case of the last two. I rather like that gap; it’s long enough that each developed  their own personality and sense of personhood, but close enough they each had someone with whom they could play. The middle one is the glue that holds the other two together, even now. I don’t think any of them would have handled being an only child well. The youngest is getting a bit of a taste of that now that his brothers are grown, but when they were small it was always the three of them, tearing through the house, or out in the yard, or up and down store aisles.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Kat’s two are closer, a mere 17 months apart. The difference in dynamics is amazing. There are times they love playing together and are each other’s fiercest friend and protector.  Then, there are other times, often no more than five minutes from being best friends, that they are each other’s worst enemy. As they explore who they are and who they want to become, they test themselves out on each other. Sometimes that works well. Other times, they end up with their faces covered in magic marker, and somehow that’s never their own fault.

I’m not sure how kids without siblings survive childhood. My brother and I were never overly close, but we still need each other. Without siblings, there’s no one to share your thoughts in the quiet moments of the night, no one to plot your next great triumph, and no one to blame when that triumph turns into disaster.  Even half-siblings that one doesn’t get to see every day is better than growing up alone, I think.

So here’s to siblings, their wonderfulness, their joy, and even the times they’re a pain in the ass. Thank you for making our lives interesting. [/one_half_last]

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PotD
Bath Time Memories
October 7, 2015
Bath time memories

charles i. letbetter - bath time tales

Pure Innocence

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.—Sylvia Plath

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]One of the most interesting experiences is bathing a baby. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but it was quite possibly the most fun ever had in our kitchen. The little infant tub fit nicely across the kitchen sink and we’d carefully make sure the water was all nice and warm before getting the baby wet. Of course, he’d immediately pee all over the place once his skin touched water, so we’d pick him up, sanitize everything again, and then put him back down in the tub. This was quite possibly the most perfect ending to any day. Their little laughs and splashes not only got them clean, but momentarily wash away all those parental anxieties that plague your mind when you have a little one.

I think one of the main reasons babies like baths so much is that the warm water reminds them of being in the womb, except that now they actually have room to squirm and move around. They aren’t quite sure what to do the first time or two; it takes a while to get accustomed to having all that space. I think it was our second one that took nearly two weeks to adjust. Being unswaddled was an anxious moment for him. We learned to strip him down to his diaper and give him a few moments to get used to the air meeting his bare skin before putting him in the bath. Once they adjust, though, they love every minute in the water. They love the warmth, the liquid, and the attention.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The down-side is that babies are slippery when wet. Did you ever try taking a shower while holding a baby?  It sounded like a good idea: have some bonding time with the little guy, save some water and time. Babies become the most slippery objects on the planet once they’re wet, though, and holding on to them is practically impossible. He loved the spray of the water and would start kicking and laughing as babies are prone to do when excited. I had to call for backup before I dropped the little bugger. Baths in a tub are much safer when sitting down anyway. We quickly abandoned that idea.

Of course, once they’re big enough to sit up a bit on their own, the kitchen sink is the perfect size for a little one’s bath. Just toss them in like a load of dishes, except leave out the dishes; that’s another one of those things that isn’t quite as good an idea in practice as it may sound. Every baby tries to nurse the kitchen faucet while sitting in the sink, which makes for awkward pictures to show their first, second, eighteenth girlfriend. Who knows, should one of them ever get married, maybe we’ll pull out those pictures for the reception.

Bath time was some of the best memories ever. I rather miss that. They grow up too soon, you leave them alone in the bath, and next thing you know they’re moving out on their own.[/one_half_last]

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PotD
Let Sleeping Babies Lie
October 6, 2015
charles i. letbetter - let sleeping babies lie

charles i. letbetter - let sleeping babies lie

Ballets and teddy bears

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.—Leo J. Burke

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I never knew how important sleeping is until we had a baby. Not so much my sleeping, mind you, but the baby’s sleeping. It really is a big deal and, like much of everything else, it varies greatly from one child to the next. All three of our boys were different. The first apparently read the textbook while he was in the womb and followed it quite precisely. He spoiled us. The second didn’t read anything and came out ready to play, not sleep. EVER. The third, bless his little heart, slept through the night from day one. That seemed to upset the pediatric nurses, but when you’re on baby number three you’ve learned: let sleeping babies lie.

When you’re about to be a new parent, you slowly become aware of just how much work this new child is going to be. Your life patterns and routines are going to be dramatically altered. As you consider the growing list of things you’ll need to do, you begin to wonder how it is all going to fit. Then, you tell yourself the biggest lie ever: “I’ll get it done while the baby is sleeping.” No, you won’t. By the time that precious little squirt finally falls asleep, you’ll be too exhausted to do anything else. You decide laundry can wait, dishes can wait, exercise can wait; pretty much everything can wait while you take a quick nap.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]”Put your baby on a schedule,” pediatricians and mommy blogs tell you. Yeah, right, like a baby can read a schedule. That approach might work once, if the child decides to agree, but be prepared to negotiate the sleeping schedule with your infant. Be prepared to lose those negotiations. The baby doesn’t understand a thing you’re saying. They’ll either laugh and coo because the big people look so funny when talking to the baby, or they’ll cry and spit up because, even at two-weeks-old, they’ve already had enough of your bullshit. Trying to put babies on a sleeping schedule is like trying to walk a cat on a leash: just because someone on the Internet says they did it doesn’t mean it’s actually possible with your child/cat.

Before you know it, your entire world revolves around the baby’s sleeping schedule. Getting them down for a nap is a precise routine you could, and sometimes do, perform with your eyes shut. You warn friends to not call or drop by while the baby is sleeping. You re-arrange your schedule, your meal times, and your entire life. There is no force or power on earth as strong as that of a sleeping baby. Be very quiet and tiptoe away.[/one_half_last]

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PotD
Diaper Changing Stations
October 5, 2015
charles i. letbetter - diaper changing stations

charles i. letbetter - diaper changing stations

Dad’s Hat

Always remember your kid’s name. Always remember where you put your kid. Don’t let your kid drive until their feet can reach the pedals. Use the right size diapers… for yourself. And, when in doubt, make funny faces.—Amy Poehler

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I still remember the first time I changed my eldest son’s diaper. Everything was so tiny. The diaper was tiny. His butt was tiny. The poop was tiny. Changing that first diaper made everything seem so easy. And while, on an intellectual level, I knew that the amount of poop in the diaper would grow and that it wouldn’t always be so easy, my feeling in those first hours of his little life was one of confidence. Diaper changing? Not a problem. We’ve got this. This whole baby thing is going to be a breeze.

Yeah, that was total naiveté at its worst. Not only was there not sufficient warning as to the extreme amounts of excrement this child would produce, I did not have the experience in greased pig wrangling that one needs to adequately diaper any child more than one-month-old. Sure, we had heard horror stories, but we never thought that our darling little boy would ever produce such a challenge. We watched what we fed him, we monitored what Mom ate while he was nursing, and we even carefully measured the amounts and types of liquid in his bottles.  We really thought we had a handle on things. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Our little guy was about four months old when disaster struck. It was a bright, sunny, Saturday morning. We had dropped off Mommy and were on our way back home when I heard a noise from the back seat that caused me to shudder. By the time we arrived at home, the fragrance was enough to tell me that we had not encountered anything quite like this. I knew that this wasn’t going to be the average diaper change, but when I opened the car door and realized that his entire car seat was covered in poop, I momentarily stepped back and questioned where I might borrow a hazmat suit. EVERYTHING in the back seat of the car had to be cleaned. Who knew one little boy’s bottom could be so very explosive.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]At least we were home to take care of that particular disaster. Even more challenging, if that’s possible, is trying to change a baby using one of the baby changing stations found in public restrooms. Like most parents, we generally avoided having to use those questionably-secured plastic tables largely because one could never be too certain as to how clean they might be. There are times, however, when one really doesn’t have a choice. When you look at your child and realize that the poop has gone up their back and into their hair, you can’t just do a quick change with the baby in the stroller. You need access to water and towels.

Unfortunately, public diaper changing stations are frequently ill-positioned to actually treat the worst diaper encounters. Whomever thought it was a good idea to put a diaper changing station inside a bathroom stall was an absolute idiot. If a parent is desperate enough to use a public changing station, they need access to a sink and warm water, not a toilet. We also need access to paper towels; not because we’re going to use them on the baby, but we’re going to want to coat that plastic changing station in as many paper towels as possible before putting down a changing pad, and then we may even want to coat the pad as a precaution. Changing a baby on a public diaper station just has way too many challenges.

I’m glad my boys have long left the days of diapers behind. I don’t wish to ever be in that position again, and am happy to walk right past most diaper changing stations. There is one diaper changing station we all need to frequent, though, and that’s the voting booth. As Mark Twain famously said, babies and politicians need to be changed for the same reason. Consider the voting booth your political diaper changing station and don’t be afraid to use it. Baby wipes optional. [/one_half_last]

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Photography  /  PotD
Babies, Then More Babies
October 4, 2015
charles i. letbetter - babies, then more babies

charles i. letbetter - Babies Then More Babies

A Moment With C-Ma (2013)

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.—Jerry Seinfeld

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Babies. Why? Because you need a break from al the nudes and I need a break from trying to pander to you. These pictures may not be as popular, though they should be, but they make me happy, sort of. I love the wonder with which they come into the world, all fresh, curious, frightened but ready to explore. I enjoy watching them try new things, and the excitement on their faces when they do something for the first time. I love capturing the expressions on a baby’s face because they don’t know to hold back or hide their feelings yet.

The thing about babies is they grow up much too quickly. One day they’re tiny and sweet and the next they’re up on top of the refrigerator sneaking the cookies you thought you’d hidden so well. Some grow up into wonderful little humans. Others grow up to be just as bratty as their parents; at least, one of their parents. How many exasperated mothers have I met whose unruly and difficult children took after the other parent, the one who wasn’t there? More than a few, to be sure. Not that mothers don’t hold their share of influence, mind you. You know when your child is behaving just like you.

Fortunately, not all of one’s personality is shaped by nature. Every child has the chance to be better than its parents. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]My favorite pictures are newborns, especially within that first 24 hours of a new life. There is something about that freshness, the look in their eyes, the absolute innocence, that makes for great pictures. They don’t need to be posed, and personally I rather resent those who take little ones and try to be all cutsie and artsy by putting them in pots or baskets for their first pictures. Newborns simply need to be held, to be loved, to be given little kisses and friendly smiles. Even when we unswaddle a newborn for pictures, we don’t leave them that way long. They need comfort and care more than we need 300 shots of an increasingly frustrated and frightened infant.

So, this week we’re looking at babies, all under a year old. Each of these little ones have grown a lot and are becoming amazing little people. While it’s fun to see who they become, it never fails to make me smile to look back and see how their lives began. Babies give me hope that maybe, just maybe, the world won’t always be as full of assholes as it is now. Babies give me hope that the world can learn to love.

As long as their parents don’t blow it.[/one_half_last]

 

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Art  /  PotD  /  Social Commentary
Love, Everyone
October 3, 2015
charles i. letbetter - love everyone

charles i. letbetter - love everyone

Welcome Home (2013)

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.—Buddha

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What’s wrong with people? I look through the news this morning and all I see is hate. Republicans hate democrats. This religion hates that religion and both hate anyone who disagrees with them. White hates black, black hates white, and they both hate brown. If I were to do a quick, informal estimation, which is exactly what I’m doing right this moment, I would say that roughly 80% of what has been tossed at me this morning ultimately contains a hateful message. Where is the love? Where is the empathy? Where is any attempt at actually wanting to get along with other people.

Here’s the great paradox of the 21st century: we’re willing to spend billions of dollars (collectively) looking for love, trying to find love, improving ourselves so that we’re more lovable, but we don’t do a damn thing toward actually loving other people. We are as selfish about love as we are everything else in our lives. We want it all to come to us, knock on our door, overwhelm us with emotional goodies, and reaffirm our sense of how valuable we are to the world. We define love not as something we feel toward other people, but by the quantity of warm fuzzies other people give to us.

In other words: we don’t have a fucking clue. For all the talk about love, we fail to realize that love is an act of giving, not an act of receiving. Love is not something that happens to you, but something you distribute to others. Love is not doing something based on what you feel, but what you feel based on what you’ve done. Love is active, not passive. Love is not something to be found, but something we create, from the center of our being, so that we might give it to someone else. Love is not narrowly limited to a familial relationship, but an over-arching sense of inclusiveness and responsibility to the greater good of humanity.

Love holds no bias, nor fear, but includes everyone.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]So, we are, and have been for a while, at this point in the United States where we have had more mass shootings (where more than four people are shot), than there have been days in the year. We foolishly ask why this keeps happening. Some want bans on weapons. Some want tighter control on those with diagnosed mental disorders.  Some want everything locked down and stored in a box where no one can get to it. None of those are solutions. We cannot solve with legislation what was not caused by government in the first place. There is only one reason we keep shooting ourselves: we’ve forgotten how to love.

It was a mere 45-50 years ago that we, my generation and those just older than us, were all about peace, and love, and happiness. We were sure that we could change the world with love, and ultimately we were correct, but we didn’t see it in the way we thought we would see it. We thought love would give us things, take away responsibility, make life more relaxed. What we failed to realize is that love creates responsibility and when we fail that responsibility, we fail love. Love doesn’t just chug along like a toy train circling the Christmas tree. Love requires maintenance, effort, and a completely selfless attitude.

Where is the American society failing? Don’t blame government, Republican orDemocrat. Don’t blame religions, present or absent. Don’t blame race or economics. Blame the total and complete absence of love. We’ve stopped loving, we’ve stopped teaching our children to love, and we’ve stopped letting love be the guide by which we live our lives. In a world where we’ve all but thrown love out the window, is it any wonder that society has gone to hell in a handbasket?

Love, everyone. You won’t learn how until you try.[/one_half_last]

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Art  /  PotD  /  Uncategorized
All Tied Up
October 2, 2015
charles i. letbetter - all tied up

charles i letbetter - all tied up

Creatively bound (2012)

Women’s fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It’s men’s way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they’re actually tied up.—David Duchovny

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Some of you are going to have difficulty believing this, since you possibly have never seen one, but there was once a time when people only had one telephone per family and that one was connected to the wall. You couldn’t take it anywhere. It had a big dial that consumed its face and one had to dial as many as eleven numbers one at a time to call anyone. There was no 911. If you needed to talk with someone in the next town over, it was considered long distance and you had to talk to an operator for that to happen.

One of the worst sins during that period of American history was keeping the phone “tied up.” This was especially serious if you shared a phone line with your neighbors, something called a party line. There was no party. At least, ours wasn’t. Sure, you could pick up the phone and listen in on their conversation, but we had boring neighbors so there wasn’t any fun in that. Instead, they complained that we always kept the phone line tied up. Poppa had calls coming in at all hours of the night and if the phone rang at our house, it rang at our neighbors’ houses, too. They weren’t especially happy.

Poppa had competition for the phone once I became a teenager. Well, sort of. I liked the concept of calling and talking to my friends, but we were all geeky and stuff and once we exchanged whatever piece of information we needed, we’d just tie up the line not saying anything.

The worst was one evening when I called the girl I was sort of dating. We tied up the phone for the better part of three hours. The conversation consisted largely of, “What are you doing?” Followed by, “Oh, not much. What are you doing.” This went on for three fucking hours.  I think half the town was annoyed with us by the time we hung up, because anyone who tried calling Poppa during that period couldn’t even leave voice mail. Instead, they just got this frustrating alternating tone called a busy signal. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Keeping the phone line tied up became serious in the 90s when we started getting modems and connecting to this thing called AOL online. They gave out free CDs at the stores and for $15 a month you could connect to their computer system and read the same news that was in the morning newspaper. We were cool. We were high-tech. We kept the phone line tied up for hours. I lived several hundred miles away from my parents by that time, but I also had their only grandchild. They tried calling often to see what he was up to, but the phone line would be tied up almost every time.

We don’t have any of those issues now, of course. Talk all you want. Text all you want. Tie up the phone all damn day if you wish. Pay a huge phone bill. I find it interesting that we consider a $50 a month phone bill inexpensive. Heads would have rolled had Poppa ever gotten a fifty dollar phone bill. I remember him once challenging a $36 bill. “No one could talk on the phone that much,” he told the customer service representative. She agreed and adjusted the bill.

Who knows what telephony will be by the time my children are my age. The technology is changing so rapidly that they likely will not have to use a device at all; voice communication will be built into clothes or, at the very least, wearable accessories. Tap an icon, order pizza. Tap a button, have a friend join you. There will be a button for calling your mother; you’ll avoid it. No one wants to tie up the shirt listening to their mother complaining about how she never gets to see the grandkids. Wearable phones means one could, theoretically, be tied up with their phone rather than on their phone. The future could be kinky.

I bet you looked at the title and picture and thought I was going a very different direction with this, didn’t you? Sorry, but I didn’t want to be that obvious. Being tied up has too many possible scenarios. I didn’t want to “tie up” your entire day.[/one_half_last]

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Art  /  PotD  /  Social Commentary
Shame, No Shame
October 1, 2015
charles i. letbetter - shame, no shame

chalres i. letbetter - shame, no shame

All Wash(er)ed Up (2010)

In the face of patriarchy, it is a brave act indeed for both men and women to embrace, rather than shame or attempt to eradicate, the feminine.—Alanis Morissette

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I grew up being taught that everyone had a responsibility to work hard. Both my parents worked long hours. I had my first paycheck at 14. Sitting around idly isn’t something I do well. I fail to understand this act of binge-watching television series because after about an hour everything in my body tells me I need to be up being productive. We were taught that it didn’t matter what you did, that all jobs contributed to the greater good and deserved people’s respect. Looking down on, or shaming someone, just because of their occupation was about as rude and ignorant a thing one could do.

So, as I’ve grown up and gotten a taste for how the world actually is, I am continually disappointed when this particular sin of shaming other people shows up, typically denigrating a friend for something they’ve done to feed themselves and/or their family, complete with name-calling and harassment. As this has happened within my circle of friends three times in the past five days, I’m calling bullshit on the shame patrol. There is no shame in working hard, no shame in getting one’s hands (and body) dirty, no shame in sweating hard, and certainly no shame in doing jobs you don’t especially like just to keep the lights on and food on the table.

One of the earliest impacts on my sense of work ethic was a WWII veteran named Warren Hartsocks. A short, stocky man who never lost his buzz cut, Hartsocks had dropped out of school to join the military. The US Army taught him to be a mechanic and that’s what he proceeded to do the rest of his life. If you came across Hartsocks during the day, he was likely wearing a well-stained wife-beater t-shirt and baggy grey pants, equally stained. He was missing most his teeth, eternally had an unlit stogie in the corner of his mouth, had a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, and in the summer his body odor could get pretty strong. People called him a dirty, foul-mouthed mechanic and tried to avoid him, but he worked hard for every dime he made, was a gentle soul, and took the time to teach me how to fish. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The list of occupations society often shames is too long, but here’s a list of the ones that I see most often:

  • Retail workers, because, you know, those clothes at the mall just jump on the rack by themselves.
  • Construction laborers; that house you live in just built itself.
  • Mechanics, like you can change a fucking tire by yourself.
  • Strippers, cam girls, etc., one of the truest forms of capitalism’s supply and demand.
  • Grocery baggers, who carry your chips and ice cream so you won’t snag a nail.
  • Janitors, because lord knows you’re too busy to empty the damn trash yourself.
  • Farm workers, laboring sunup to sundown because you just have to have strawberries in December.
  • Meat packers, constantly covered in blood.
  • Food service employees, because minimum wage would make them too rich.
  • Truck drivers, on the road too long to get you those damn strawberries.

I can only think of one occupation that deserves shame: Politicians. Our country’s founders envisioned elected office to be one of public service, not privilege or power, and certainly not one that led to wealth. The concept was that a person would give a period of time to serve the people from their elected districts, not pander to ridiculous ideologues and corporations with deep pockets. Politicians inherently serve only their own interests at the expense of the rest of us. They have taken us from being a democracy to an oligarchy. Public office was never designed to be a position of profit, but one of giving to one’s country.

Too many days I go to bed totally disappointed in the human race. We shame those who work the hardest and praise those who contribute to our demise. Perhaps the real shame is on us all.[/one_half_last]

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Lies, Lies, & More Lies
September 30, 2015
charles i. letbetter - lies, lies, and more lies

charles i. letbetter - lies, lies, & more lies

Bathed in White (2010)

Men are liars. We’ll lie about lying if we have to. I’m an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.—Tim Allen

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Once upon a time, in murky-memoried days of my youth when I really didn’t know what was going on, my father used to refer to that month before an election as lying season. He would be disturbed to find that the season is pretty much continual now, with neither a start nor end point. There’s no truth coming out after an election, politicians just spread the lies on that much thicker and because they’re fed through a media machine in the form of soundbites, we swallow the greater percentage of those lies, hook, line, and sinker.

Gullible is what we are. We want so desperately to believe our leaders that we’ll believe them when they say something so enormously stupid such as, “Planned Parenthood only exists to perform abortions.” That’s nonsense and we know it, but apparently we’re not doing a good enough job calling them on it. We just let them lie.

Of course, we’re pretty good at that lying thing, too. The biggest lie we tell is, “I’m fine.” No, we’re not. We’re depressed, concerned, hurting like hell both physically and emotionally, tired of having to suck it up day in and day out to just keep things around us from falling apart, and we’re sick as fuck of all the lies. We’re done with people telling us they have a solution when they don’t even have a firm grasp of the problem. We’re upset. We’re pissed off. We’re worn out. This is the real reason so many people support marijuana legalization: we’re looking for an escape from all the bullshit.

That last line is probably a lie. I have absolutely no facts to back it up, but hey, it sounds good and fits my political opinion. If I repeat it enough times you’ll believe it, maybe. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]I am amused that we have to have truth-telling websites such as Snopes.com and Politifact.com to help us determine what’s a lie and what isn’t. To demonstrate how bad it is, I’ll post some recent lies, and then the link to the truth. You decide whether you want to click the link or believe the lie.

Lies are all around us and a big part of the reason there are so many of them is that we don’t stop sharing the damn things. We need to realize that we can’t trust cable news outlets (any of them). We can’t trust anything posted as a meme on social media. We can’t trust pretend news sources on the Internet. Everyone is lying to us.

Except the dog. Dogs don’t know how to lie.[/one_half_last]

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#BlackBunsMatter
September 29, 2015
charles i. letbetter - #BlackBunsMatter

charles i. letbetter - #BlackBunsMatter

Trying to Breathe (2009)

Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.—Matthew McConaughey

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]You know, I generally try to stay away from the really tough, polarizing, hardest-hitting issues of the day because they get so much noise everywhere else anything I might say just gets lost in the mix. I couldn’t let this matter just pass by without comment, though. Fast food burger chain Burger King® has introduced a burger with A.1.® sauce baked into the bun. The result is that the bun takes on a black color, presumably without the bun tasting like burned charcoal. I think this deserves a movement. Therefore, I’m introducing #BlackBunsMatter

Here’s how BK® describes the burger on their website:

Introducing the A.1.® Halloween WHOPPER® Sandwich with A.1.®flavor baked into the black bun. The sandwich is a ¼ lb.* of savory flame-grilled beef topped with melted American cheese, ripe tomatoes, crisp iceberg lettuce, creamy mayonnaise, A.1.® Thick and Hearty Sauce, crunchy pickles, and sliced white onions on a soft sesame seed bun with A.1.® flavor baked into the bun.

The chain actually announced the seasonal burger a couple of weeks ago, but CNN and some other alleged news outlets didn’t really pick up on it until yesterday, and then it started hitting my news feeds. Trolling the comments section, it was obvious that no one was gathering the significance of this move. We’ve been eating white buns all these years as though they were the only option. Sure, we might put sesame seeds on some, or twist them to look like pretzels, but they’ve all been variations of the same white buns. Until now. Now, #BlackBunsMatter. Spread the word.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Of course, not everyone is going to be very fast to embrace #BlackBunsMatter. Obviously, there’s going to be a political divide. You’re not likely to catch any of the GOP presidential front-runners with a black bun in their hands, that would just be too controversial. Tensions are high in the bun world after all and not everyone agrees with the #BlackBunsMatter movement. That guy with the funny hair would likely call it ridiculous. The former governor of Arkansas would likely claim the bun is sourced from hell. And that Texas senator Mr. Boehner calls a jackass would probably try to shut down the government over it.  #BlackBunsMatter is bigger than any of them, though.

I’m sure someone will come along and try to derail the movement with #AllBunsMatter, but they just don’t get the point. For too long, buns of color have been shunned, especially by the restaurant and hospitality industry. Sure, I’ve created a black bun or two in my time, usually from being distracted after putting them on the grill, and no one would ever eat those black buns because they were prejudiced toward soft, white buns. But the time for buns of color has come. Let there be black buns! Let there be brown buns! Let there be red buns! Let there be tanned buns covered in butter! #BlackBunsMatter!

Yes, we’re joking, and we don’t mean to make light of some very serious and important racial issues dividing our country. It’s a hamburger bun, though. If we can’t have a little fun with this thing, we need to re-evaluate our entire lives. Be sure, if BK® didn’t have the trademark locked down, I would SO be selling #BlackBunsMatter t-shirts right now. Or maybe ball caps, in case anyone wants to run for president.[/one_half_last]

 

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Mythology  /  PotD
Moon? What Moon?
September 28, 2015
charles i. letbetter - moon, what moon

Charles I. Letbetter - moon, what moon

If We Had A Beach (2010)

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.—George Carlin

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]My newsfeed this morning is filled with pictures of the fucking moon. Yeah, okay, I get it; last night’s moon was super special awesome sauce with its larger appearance (it didn’t actually change size), lunar eclipse with a blood red ending that was both a full and harvest moon. Hell, for all I know, the man in the moon may have shot lasers from its eyes. I stayed up for a while, caught the first two-thirds of the eclipse, and then clouds set in. I’m not going to stay up hoping for a hole in the clouds. I have better things to do. I went to bed.

Now, what would really interest me would be if there were some really unusual occurrences that took place during all this moon fuss. I saw one person relate that their dog had been acting weird all day, but considering the source their dog probably has good reason to act weird on any given day simply because it’s their dog. Same goes for Republicans who have been acting especially stupid the past ten years; can’t blame that one on the moon. The Tipster, who is five, woke up early complaining of bad dreams, and perhaps the metaphysically-inclined person might blame that on the funky moon, but she’s five, she’s going to have the occasional bad dream. Perhaps the horn fell off her unicorn.

What I’m looking for are those really weird, unexplainable stories, like an old man walking into a convenience store at 11:59 and not buying a lottery ticket. Or an old woman crossing a busy street without the aid of a boy scout and still arriving on the other side alive and intact. That kind of weirdness has, so far, been elusive. Perhaps it just takes some time for the stories to filter down through the media. I mean, with some predicting that the moon would bring about the apocalypse, I think we have a right to expect something strange and unholy to have happened. Oh wait, the Pope returned to Italy last night, didn’t he? Maybe that’s the big event. The Pope left and now the anti-christ can appear. Don’t hold your breath on that one.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Nonetheless, the moon thing happened and over seven billion of us survived just as insane this morning as we were twenty-four hours ago. Life will go on this morning. Giorgio Armani presents his spring/summer 2016 collection just a few minutes from when I’m typing this, and that will effectively end Milan Fashion Week. Not that there aren’t additional fashion shows after his; there are four listed on the official calendar, and there are probably some other small presentations as well. It’s just that after the Armani shows no one that matters gives a fuck. Paris Fashion Week starts early in the morning. There’s a rush to the airport for that six-hour flight to Paris.

What did the moon look like in Paris? I’ve no idea. The few friends I have in Paris were sleeping, not up taking pictures of the moon. They have other things to worry about, such as the flood of wanna-be street photographers flooding the city, taking pictures of every reasonably attractive person on the street. This is a challenging time to be Parisian. Fashion Week in Paris means one has to actually stop and think about what they’re wearing before they go out to snag a baguette. Be sure, if you’re not totally put together, with hair and makeup done, someone will take your picture and splatter it all over the Internet. Then, when your mother sees it, and she will, she’ll call and ask if you’re feeling well because the picture made you look  pale and have you been eating anything other than baguettes?

Fact is, moons happen. Occurences like last night have happened before. The planet survived then, it will survive now, and it will survive when it happens again in 33 years. Maybe you’ll still be around to see that one. Maybe it won’t be so damn cloudy next time. Or maybe we just won’t care. Maybe we’ll be focusing more on helping other people, making lives better, and less worried about the apocalypse. Although, I did see a picture of a baby alpaca yesterday. He had lips. I wonder what he thought of the moon?[/one_half_last]

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Totally Unrelated To Anything
September 27, 2015
charles i. letbetter - totally unrelated to anything

charles i. letbetter - totally unrelated to anything

Oops, it slipped (2010)

Providing meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures – it is the designer’s job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting.—Paul Rand

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Welcome to our grand experiment, one which is far from being scientific and authoritative in nature, but still slightly more than anecdotal. You see, for websites like this one to be profitable, one of two things has to happen: either it drives enough traffic to make advertising ratios work, or it drives enough traffic to actually impact business. Neither of those has happened yet. There are a number of factors involved, of course, but one of my frustrations is that the content of the articles seems irrelevant to their popularity. What matters is how provocative are the pictures. Last week proved that premise quite handily. The pictures were totally unrelated to anything. We knew we were pandering, and it worked; our weekly hit count was higher than it’s been in months.

So, this week we continue in the same vein, but going a step further. The articles this week will not only be unrelated to the pictures, but they’ll be unrelated to anything. They may be funny, they may be nonsense, they may occasionally be serious, but you won’t catch us talking about technical things like how the mirror reflected light awkwardly back in the model’s face in this picture. Nor will I tell related stories like how it snowed nearly nine inches while we were shooting this set, or how the place where we shot no longer looks anything like this now, which makes me sad. Instead, I’ll talk about something totally different, like trees.

Except that, for the moment, I’m not really interested in trees. I’ve not done any research on trees. I have noticed that our lack of rain is ruining the fall foliage. Rather than turning colors, leaves are simply dying, turning brown, and falling. How depressing that is. No pretty colors. Rather sucks when you think about it. We had all that rain back in the spring and now we get nothing. I suppose this is making it easier to get in the fall harvest; fields aren’t muddy so farm implements can roll across the crops with optimum efficiency. I have cousins whose business involves leasing combines and such for the harvest. I would imagine their business is doing rather well at the moment.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]For the two or three people who actually attempt to read the articles, this week could be either entertaining or frustrating, depending on what happens. What I’m expecting is that I’ll get up each morning and just go with a stream of consciousness based on how I’m feeling at the moment. Milan Fashion Week wraps up on Tuesday, Paris Fashion Week starts Wednesday. Both require me getting up earlier than usual some days, but at least Paris is only a five-hour time difference versus Milan’s six. That extra hour can be brutal when there’s a critical show at 3:30 AM our time. I’m not sure I’m capable of anything resembling consciousness at that point.

Early morning writing requires help. I have a browser plugin that not only checks my spelling, which can be atrocious early in the morning, but also checks my grammar. Sometimes its grammar checks are a little too strict for this style of writing. I am, after all, being rather conversant. This isn’t the New York Times by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, it pains me to see any writing where the grammar is totally ignored, and when the plugin corrects things it usually does so with good reason. I miss things when I’m tired. I also have difficulty caring when I’m tired. I’ve been tired a lot, lately. The plugin has been working overtime.

Totally unrelated, I’m wondering what would be too explicit; at what point would a photo be so audacious as to actually turn traffic away? Is that even possible? At the same time, I more frequently wonder what it would take for people to actually start sharing these posts; that’s what it’s going to take to really bump the hit counts. I can only reach a limited number of people at any given time. For us to get the big numbers, where the website begins to pay off, people have to share what they see here and that’s not happening. But then, how many people are doing anything more than looking at the pictures, anyway?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Totally unrelated to anything.[/one_half_last]

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pop culture  /  PotD
Death Defying LIfe
September 26, 2015
charles i. letbetter - death defying life

charles i. letbetter - death defying life

Home Stretch (2009)

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.—Tecumseh

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Welcome to Saturday, that point in the week where I look back and wonder if you’ve noticed what we’ve done or if you’ve only looked at the pictures. This is the time when I question my decision to disable comments, because I wouldn’t mind legitimate feedback. The problem is that activating comments opens the whole thing up to trolls who, speaking of death, definitely deserve to die horrendously. I don’t tolerate rudeness and don’t have time to respond to such nonsense, so there are no comments. Still, it would be nice to know who is reading, I’m guessing maybe two or three people a day.

If you’ve been reading, though, have you noticed what we’ve done this week? Mass pandering. We’ve used provocative images to get faces to the page, then discussed totally unrelated subjects; in this case, the leading causes of death as published in the medical journal The Lancet last week. We’ve hit them all with a sense of fury and if you’ve missed one today would probably be a good time to go back and catch up. Some are rather humorous while others are just angry that we can be so very stupid. And when it comes to death, we truly are rather stupid about the whole thing.

Somewhere along the line, society has developed this ridiculous notion that immortality is something to be achieved; that if we didn’t have to worry about death then we could do more with our lives. As a result, we’ve come to loathe death, which we really don’t understand in the first place, and placed untold resources into attempting to avoid it rather than focusing on improving what we already have. Even if our lives did span hundreds of years, they would still be meaningless if we continued living them in the same way we do now. Prolonging the status quo is not a desirable condition.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Stop and think for a moment what would happen if we were all suddenly immortal, if death simply ceased to be a factor. While it sounds like a good idea on the surface, it doesn’t take long for things to go sour. Consider these elements:

  1. If no one is dying, then no one can be allowed to have babies. The planet’s population already exceeds sustainability.
  2. Our bodies would naturally continue to deteriorate and within a few very short years we would have a planet of geriatrics.
  3. Avoiding death doesn’t mean we avoid disease. Imagine having to live with the ravages of advanced-staged cancer forever.
  4. Prisons would become even more overcrowded than they currently are.  With immortality comes a crime wave like the planet has never seen. Barbarism would quickly return.
  5. There would be no escaping the people you don’t like. If you’re not dying, they’re not dying either, and with all eternity in front of you this planet is going to get very small, very quickly.

Death has a very necessary purpose. We need that finality, that ending point, to help keep us on track, to allow us to regenerate society through new life, and to help us realize that if we’re going to do something that matters, we need to start doing it right now, not sometime in the unknown future. If you want to live a death-defying life then you need to be doing something other than overeating, smoking, and creating stress. Do things that actually make a positive difference, not only in your lives, but those of others.

Of course, that can only happen if you actually read the articles and not just look at the pictures. [/one_half_last]

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pop culture  /  PotD
Pollution
September 25, 2015
charles i. letbetter - pollution

charles i. letbetter - pollution

An Early Morning

Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?
—B. F. Skinner

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Pollution is an interesting topic, don’t you think? With all the environmental talk these days having turned to the matter of global warming, we have to wonder whether anyone is paying attention to actual pollution anymore. What tops that, though, at least in my heavily weighted opinion, is that we tend to think of pollution as an outdoor thing when indoor pollution is every bit as deadly. No, I’m not kidding. Your gas is shortening people’s lives, man. You need to lay off the burritos.

According to figures released by The Lancet, a respected medical journal, indoor pollution is just as much a contributor to death, 2.9 million people, as is outdoor pollution. Put the two together, and pollution suddenly jumps up to the second leading cause of death in the world, even more than smoking. No matter where we turn, there is so very little fresh air left on the planet it’s a wonder we are still breathing at all. The oxygen we need to survive is running preciously thin and every time you open your mouth you are putting someone else in danger. There, how does that make you feel? Not good, huh?

And just why do we have so much indoor pollution? Someone forgot to crack a window. Seriously. Inadequate ventilation is responsible for 53% of indoor pollution. I know researchers will try to say that it is poor ventilation in factories that are the most threatening to the greatest number of people, especially in developing nations where workplace regulations about air quality are non-existent. But something tells me those researchers would have a different opinion if they’ve ever been hotboxed in a car with three teenage boys who just stopped at Taco Bell®™. Noxious fumes capable of peeling paint come out of the human posterior. Don’t try telling me that stuff isn’t shortening all our lives.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]In  an ultimate display of human stupidity, we have chosen for years to completely ignore the matter of pollution. We know it’s there. We know we’re causing it. But the people who control the money are afraid if we do things to clean up this incredible mess we’ve created that it might eat into their over-inflated bottom line. The late (thankfully) President Ronald Reagan tried blaming nature itself for causing the majority of air contaminants. While technically that charge is true, there is one big difference between natural contaminants and manufactured contaminants: nature cleans up its own damn mess, humans don’t.

Yeah, that’s right; the rebellious act of not wanting to clean our rooms as children has spread to the whole damn planet. Wherever we go, we make a mess and we don’t want to clean it up. In a way, the fact that our pollution is killing us is probably just reward for being the colossal brats that we are. One might even go so far as to say that choking on our over-industrialization is nature’s way of attempting to eliminate the problem. We ruin the air we breathe, we die, the air becomes clean again. Isn’t that the way nature works?

Of course, it’s the poor who are most likely to die from the effects of pollution, and the poor don’t have a voice in the political decisions that have turned our planet, indoors and out, into a giant cesspool of stinking corporate flatulence. Those who have the money for expensive air purification systems don’t worry about the health of those who don’t. The same jackasses who won’t roll down a window in the car are laughing about hotboxing the entire planet.

So here’s a message from the planet to humanity: Hey people, you stink. Clean up your shit or leave. And cut back on the burritos. Enjoy the picture. Thanks, Earth. [/one_half_last]

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pop culture  /  PotD
A Poverty Of Life
September 24, 2015
charles i. letbetter - a poverty of life

charles i. letbetter - a poverty of life

Leave A Simple Photo Alone (2015)

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.—Frederick Douglass 

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What did you have for breakfast this morning, anything at all? As adults, the meal is perhaps the easiest to skip. A cup of coffee and we’re out the door. We don’t have time, we’re not in the mood to prepare anything, and many people just don’t have breakfast food in the house. Maybe we could make toast, but that’s about it. I’ve heard mothers complain that they just can’t get their children to eat breakfast. My mother would be appalled. Breakfast wasn’t an option, it was a mandate.

Life really wasn’t all that different when I was growing up, but there was one thing about which my mother was adamant: you’re eating breakfast. It didn’t matter how early it meant we had to get up, we weren’t leaving the house without having food. Where we lived in rural Oklahoma, there was no catching something on the way, or stopping at the convenience store down the street because there was nothing there! I think school breakfast might have been an option, but I never knew anyone who actually ate it. There were some Saturday mornings in high school where the band bus left for a trip at some ungodly hour that required us to leave home at something like 5:00 AM. Guess what, we sat down and had breakfast first. Every morning. Not just something slapped together, either. Eggs. Bacon or sausage. Hot cereal during the winter. Toast. Fruit in season, when we could afford it. Breakfast was a big deal.

Today, there are more options. It actually makes sense for Kat’s kids to eat their breakfast at school; it’s built into their schedule along with lunch. We know they’re getting nutritionally appropriate meals and we don’t have the added fuss at home of trying to convince them to finish their food before the bus comes at 6:30. People who have to commute to work also have more options now than were available forty years ago. There’s a fast food option on every other corner. Seated service restaurants are in greater abundance. Grocery stores are open earlier. We’ve got it made, right?[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]No, we don’t have it made. Having it “made” means that everything is balanced and healthy and that we’re making the right choices. None of those things are accurate. Our lives and our diets are anything but balanced or healthy and we’re notorious for making bad choices. We create poverty within our own lives by eliminating the things we need most while being excessive in the things we need the least. Children get the worst of it, too. We place them in food poverty by failing to make sure they’re actually eating fruit. Globally, a lack of food in the diet kills 3.4 million people a year, and the great majority of those are children. They don’t only have impoverished diets, they have impoverished lives.

More than a financial state, poverty is a life condition. Even people whose incomes are well above what is considered the poverty line can still have impoverished lives because of the choices they make in how they spend what they have. One of the biggest areas of poverty, strangely enough, comes in having too few fruits and we replace that with an excess of sodium, which in turn kills yet another 3.5 million people. And no, grabbing a bottle of juice isn’t the same, especially for children. Juice doesn’t contain the fiber and other nutrients available in whole fruit. What’s sad is grocery stores and markets dump tons of wasted fruit every day. Global economies keep prices out of reach for people who need fruit the most, and those who can afford fruit look at it more as a dessert item, not a dietary necessity.

We like to think we’re rich, and comparatively we are, but look in your shopping cart the next time you buy food. If you have three different kinds of chips, packaged foods, and/or soda, and less than three different kinds of fresh fruit, you are creating a poverty of life for you and your family. We should all be appalled. [/one_half_last]

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Pure Sweetness
September 23, 2015
charles i. letbetter - pure sweetness

charles i. letbetter - pure sweetness

Maternity Yoga (2014)

As a culture I see us as presently deprived of subtleties. The music is loud, the anger is elevated, sex seems lacking in sweetness and privacy.—Shelley Berman

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I’m old enough to remember life before artificial sweeteners, back when sugar was what sweetened everything, not this fucking corn syrup used now. There was sugar in everything and people wanted you to know it. There were Sugar Pops and Sugar Smacks and Sugar Frosted Flakes and Sugared Sugar. Sweetness was something people took seriously. They expected it. They respected it. Diabetes? That was something someone else had, that poor kid in the classroom who had to have plain popcorn while the rest of us had cupcakes. They tended to be weak, puny kids, not very good at football, which was also sweetened.

Then some idiot decided that the world needed a sugar substitute. Why? Was there too much sweetness in the world? Were people just enjoying their lives too much and some fucking jackass decided they needed to ruin it? There was no reason to give us artificial sweeteners, but suddenly we had them. They told us it was healthier. So, my parents ran out and bought some. They tried it first in the sweet tea. It was horrible. Then, my mother tried it in cookies. We dumped those in the trash. Next, we tried it on Corn Flakes. Definitely not a good start to the morning. Artificial sweeteners aren’t sweet. They suck. Every last one of them. How can such a sucky flavor be good for anyone, except that it makes you not want to put that garbage in your mouth so maybe you eat less?

Sweetness is a constitutional right; I’m sure of it. Maybe it doesn’t say so in so many words, but the implication has to be there somewhere. We have an inalienable right to the unspoken affection that comes with being sugared to death. I remember once, in the 70s, when they were doing drive-by diabetes screenings at the health department, next door to where my mom worked. She wanted Poppa to bring my brother and I by to be tested, just to make sure we were healthy. So, you know what he did? He dropped mom off at work and then took my brother and I for donuts! We had two iced donuts each. So when we come back around and have our fingers stuck for the test, guess what? Our blood sugar levels were damn near off the chart! They said we were borderline diabetic. I wonder why![/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Here’s the thing: people think that sugar is the primary cause of diabetes, which is a horrible disease that kills a lot of people. In fact, high blood sugar is the fourth leading cause of death in the world; it kills around four million people a year. There are 29 million Americans with diabetes and that number keeps rising. You know why? It’s not because we’re eating too much sugar, that’s for damn sure. It’s because we’re eating too many McFattyFatFat cheeseburgers with fries soaked in corn syrup and we think we’re safe because we wash it down with a diet soda. All this pretend sweetness is killing us!

What makes all this worse, is that 1 in 4 people who are diabetic don’t realize that they have diabetes. They have no clue. Their diet consists of one fast food drive-thru after another. Their lives are sedentary, sitting in an office all day and their asses parked on a couch all night. The only time they see a hint of fruit is when it’s baked in a pie. They’re dying and they don’t know it. Pass ’em a Diet Coke®™. I’m sure that will help.

Even people who know they have Type II Diabetes don’t seem to care. I knew a lady once who was diabetic and kept wondering why she felt so bad. She smoked non-stop. She ate almost nothing but delivery pizza and cookies. She got absolutely no exercise. She didn’t take her insulin. No, I have no idea why she couldn’t even fucking walk and her feet were turning black.

I fucking like sugar. I like sugar so much my hood name should be Sweetness Letbetter. I’m not stupid, though. I know if I’m going to sit here with handfuls of chocolate during these damn fashion shows, I’m going to have to get up, move around, and eat some fucking vegetables to counter that crack. I like sugar, but I know there’s a limit and I watch it.  Apparently, not all of you fuckers are as smart because you’re dying off at a pretty alarming rate and you’re costing the world a lot of money in health care. Put down the damn diet soda, why don’t you. Artificial sweeteners not helping, they just taste bad. Talk to your doctor and get that shit under control.

The ultimate sweetness is being alive. Try staying that way.[/one_half_last]

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The Real Skinny
September 22, 2015
charles i. letbetter - the real skinny

charles i. ltbetter - the real skinny

Doesn’t Matter (2014)

We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: ‘Boy, you are skinny, aren’t you?’ I said: ‘Honey, I’d like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.’—Lou Holtz

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]For the first forty years of my life, I was thin, at times disturbingly so. It wasn’t that I wanted to be thin, nor that I was trying to be thin. Quite the opposite, actually. I would have loved to have had enough mass to actually develop muscles and such, but that never happened. I delighted in over-eating to excess at buffets but never could gain weight. At 30 I was still able to wear the same pair of Levi’s 501 jeans that I bought when I was 18. Now, for women, that kind of tale isn’t unusual, but for men it’s practically unheard of. I had no muscle mass. If I ate too much and was bloated, I looked like Bloom County’s Bill the Cat (well, maybe not as orange). There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, no matter how hard I tried, and believe me, I tried.

Then, I hit 40. Boom. Like flipping a switch, I started gaining weight and suddenly staying off the 200-pound mark became an issue. Actually, with my body frame and size, I didn’t need to be above 170, and even that was frighteningly larger than I’d ever been. I started having to buy larger clothes, replace suits, and spend money that I really hadn’t planned on spending. What, when, and how I ate suddenly became an issue, as did the amount of exercise and stress. My health changed. I was sick more often. I had to watch my blood sugar. High blood pressure, which runs in our family anyway, was suddenly a much more important issue. That skinny teenager is gone and is never going to come back. Instead, like almost every other American and a large number of people around the world, I have to fight with obesity.

Fuck. I like fried chicken, chicken fried steak smothered in pepper gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans cooked with bacon grease, cornbread dripping with butter and corn on the cob far too much to have a weight issue. And don’t even get me started on the importance of chocolate, especially this time of year when the fashion shows are one right after the other and I’m not getting nearly enough sleep. I’ve been able to eat as much as I want whenever I want my entire life. What the hell does my body think it’s doing gaining all this weight all of a sudden? I don’t have time for an interpersonal rebellion like this. Pass the pie. Not, not a piece of pie, give me the whole damn pie. And more coffee, damnit. I have work to do. This is just a temporary, thing.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]No, it’s not. I’m well past 40 now and the problem isn’t going away. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that much of society’s view of what’s “skinny,” and our subsequent jealous loathing of that condition, is based almost entirely upon the skewed perspective born of one basic fact: we’re all too fucking fat. What’s more, is that we know we’re fat, we know it’s killing us, and we just don’t fucking care. We’ve thrown caution to the wind and ordered another triple burger with quadruple cheese, bacon, and onion rings. And should anyone actually challenge our obesity, we fight back with something stupid like, “You’re fat shaming me. I can’t help it, I was born large.”

Bullshit. Even if you were a ten-pound baby you were not born obese. Obesity, for the vast majority of Americans, is something we have chosen for ourselves and then proceeded to surround ourselves with a variety of excuses for our slovenliness. Let’s be clear: there’s a difference between being overweight and being obese. There can be many contributors to being overweight, including, but not limited to, water retention, bone mass, and muscle buildup. Being obese comes down to just one thing, though: FAT. The National Institues of Health calculate obesity according to Body Mass Index. If yours is over 30, you’re overweight. If it’s over 40, you’re obese. Want to see what yours is? Click here and don’t fucking lie. This morning, mine is 24.3, which is on the upper end of normal for my height. I need to be careful and exercise more.

Sure, there are people who are too skinny and that’s a problem, but shaming thin people just because they’re not so incredibly fucking fat like you just emphasises that your brain is as fat as your body. Well over two of three Americans are overweight or obese and Indiana is currently ranked number eight as one of the ten most obese states in the country. Try and justify it any way you want, we’re not healthy. Obesity is the third most common cause of death on this planet and it is totally preventable. Even our kids, our babies, are too fucking fat and it’s our fault. Put down the fucking fork. Park a few extra spaces from the door. Walk. Exercise. And stop making fucking excuses. You’re fat. You can either change or die. Your call.[/one_half_last]

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pop culture  /  PotD
Smoking. Hot.
September 21, 2015
charles i. letbetter - smoking. hot.

charles i. letbetter - smoiking. hot.

Dances With Pearls (2014)

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.—Mark Twain

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I hate the sight of no smoking signs. Not that I’m this huge smoker by any stretch of the imagination. Cigarettes are, in my opinion, a waste of money; three or four puffs and they’re gone. Why bother? I’ll occasionally smoke a pipe if I’m stressed and trying to chill, or perhaps have a cigar while out in the middle of nowhere, sitting around a campfire. I don’t have this huge oral fixation that requires I put something up to my mouth all the time. Still, the very sight of a no smoking sign angers me because it restricts my right to choose. Am I not intelligent enough to make the right choice? Are you calling me stupid with your fucking sign? Can you not see how horribly insulting that damn sign is?

I understand: clean air.  The statistics regarding second-hand smoke are damning. I’ll admit, I don’t mind walking into an office, especially the doctor’s office, and the whole place not smelling like smoke. I don’t mind walking into a restaurant and not having to choose between smoking or non-smoking (we typically chose smoking  simply because it was less crowded). I don’t mind coming home and my clothes not smelling like a cheap brand of cigarettes. I get it. I understand what anti-smoking advocates are trying to do. I still don’t like the damn signs.

Statistics are clear: cigarette smoking remains the largest single preventable cause of death in the United States. In addition to killing somewhere in the neighborhood of 480,000 people in the US each year, the direct cost of that addiction in terms of healthcare and lost productivity is around $300 billion annually. Smoking doesn’t play fair, either. One is more likely to smoke if they are male, has their GED, is a former service member, and is racially mixed, according to statistical evidence. Children born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are likely to have a significantly lower birth rate. Smoking is the second leading cause of death in the entire world. The numbers against smoking are absolutely overwhelming.

There’s just one problem: Uncle Fred.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]If you’ve known me more than five minutes I’ve probably told you about my Uncle Fred. I know I’ve written about him before. Uncle Fred was one of those migrants in John Updike’s The Grapes of Wrath that left dust bowl Oklahoma along with his wife, Aunt Irene, who was my grandmother’s sister. They settled in Turlock, California, up in the Northern end of that state, worked hard from sunup to sundown, raised three boys, were heavily engaged in civic activities, traveled when they could, argued with each other like cats and dogs and lived what was, for their time, a pretty normal life.

Uncle Fred was a two-pack-a-day smoker. He was respectful, he’d go outside, step away from the doorway, smoke two or three, then come back inside. If it were raining and the porch was too short, he’d either find a tree or stand under the eve of the house. All that smoking eventually killed him … at age 96. Aunt Irene, who didn’t smoke and wouldn’t allow Fred to do it in their house, died four years later at age 92. If we look solely at Fred and Irene’s statistics, smoking’s apparently good for you. That’s why I have a problem with those damn signs. Statistics are numbers and numbers aren’t people. We don’t know how many Uncle Freds there are because, since they aren’t dying off too quickly, we’re not studying them.

There are roughly 320 million people in the United States. If we lose 480,000 to smoking each year, that’s a whopping 0.15% of the total. Pay attention. That’s not fifteen percent. That’s less than two-tenths of ONE percent. We’re making all this fuss over a group of people so statistically small that, in almost any other study, they would be insignificant. With over seven billion people on the planet, we’re over-populated beyond the point of sustainability. We need more than 0.15% to die off if we’re going to continue living here. Sustainability is more critical than smoking at this point. Think of smokers as volunteers for population control.

Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em and lose the damn signs.[/one_half_last]

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pop culture  /  PotD
Why Worry?
September 20, 2015
charles i. letbetter - why worry

charles i. letbetter - why worry

Just Nude (2014)

If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.—George Burns

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I am half tempted to just fill the rest of the page with videos. That would make the morning a lot easier on me. I wouldn’t have to worry about word count or whether anyone reads past the first paragraph. The videos would be cool, too. Madcon’s Don’t Worry was a decent enough hit earlier this year. Since 1973, Stevie Wonder’s been telling us, Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing. Bob Marley assured us, Every Little Thing‘s gonna be alright. Bobby McFarrin has been trying for years to convince us to Don’t Worry, Be Happy.  All of those songs have some very good advice, and if we all took that advice we might just live to the ripe old age of 101 as did George Burns, who was possibly one of the funniest people to ever live.

We’re not terribly good at that whole not worrying thing, though, and that in of itself is cause for worry. Why? Because it’s killing us, jackass. Mr. Burns laid it out right there for you: worry, stress, hypertension. All those things result in high blood pressure and high blood pressure is the single largest contributor to death in the entire fucking world. We worry too damn much, and it’s not getting any better. According to an article this past week in The Lancet, and reported by National Public Radio (NPR), the rate of high blood pressure as the cause of death has risen from 6.4 million in 1990, to 10.4 million in 2013.

Don’t worry, we have plenty of songs that can make us happy, right? And if that doesn’t work, there’s always cat memes and cute puppy videos on the Internet to help us forget that our lifestyle choices totally suck. If that doesn’t work, we have mindless reality shows filled with mindless people who become famous for making absolutely no worthwhile contribution to the human race whatsoever. And if that doesn’t work, then hey, there are always babies: pictures of babies making funny faces, videos of babies doing funny things, and plenty of websites demonstrating the various positions from which one can make babies. Why worry? Make babies![/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Wait, no, that doesn’t work either, because then we have to worry about how we’re going to feed, clothe, and educate that baby so that they don’t grow up to be as worthless as that idiot, whomever that idiot may be. Sure, we want our kids to grow up better than us, but how is that going to happen when global wages have gone down over the past 30 years so that our buying power is now less than the same money was when our parents were diapering our shitty asses? Do we really want kids starting their adult lives with more debt than the value of the house in which they grew up? How the fuck is that supposed to be an improvement?

Personally, I think we need to eliminate politicians. Approximately 70 million adults, 1 in 3 people over the age of 21, have high blood pressure and a great deal of that comes from the fact we have this group of fucking imbeciles in Washington, D. C. who keep fucking with our lives. And it’s not so much that we mind being taxed, we are willing to pay our fair share, but those morons keep giving our money to Wall Street fat cats while our roads crumble beneath us. They spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on senseless, manufactured wars while woefully underfunding education so that maybe, just maybe, we can figure out how to stop having stupid fucking wars. Kill the politicians, and those things that make us worry all go away, right?

I wish. The bottom line is we have so many things to worry about because we keep making stupid fucking choices. We choose food that kills us. We elect politicians that screw us. We tolerate a banking system that impoverishes us.  We work at jobs that bore us for a paycheck too small to house us. We spending too much time on the fucking Internet searching for ways to improve our life instead of actually going out and improving our life. But hey, whatever you do, DON’T WORRY! That worry stuff’ll kill ya’.

Okay, maybe one video below the break. Even I need it after that rant.[/one_half_last]

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Purpose
September 19, 2015
charles i. letbetter - purpose

charles i. letbetter - purpose

On A Pedestal (2014)

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.—Charlie Chaplin

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]The universe may be making a comment on one’s day when one gets up in the morning and the first thing in the newsfeed is an article on death; specifically, how the primary causes of death have changed since 1990, a mere 25 years ago. High blood pressure still tops the list, which reminds me I need to take my pill. But then, articles like this don’t help any, either. They just make my blood pressure a little higher. You know, worry and all.

What seems obvious, looking at the primary causes of death, is that we are all committing suicide in one way or the other. Take a look at these figures:

Source: The Lancet

Source: The Lancet

How many of those are the direct result of our mode of living; lifestyle choices we make, excesses in which we indulge, knowing full well the consequences but still choosing to go right ahead and tempt fate. What’s the purpose? Do we only live so that we can orchestrate our own deaths in less-than-spectacular fashion? If we are creating lives so unbearable that we must worry, smoke, drink, and overeat in order to cope, what’s the fucking point?[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Christian author and megachurch pastor Rick Warren has written and talks extensively about “the Purpose Driven Life,” and popular culture has latched onto his concepts of a religious-based purpose to living. Many other self-help gurus have done the same thing, trying to use religion, or some universal sense of spirituality as a basis for there being some reason to exist. The recently deceased Dr. Wayne Dyer once said:

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.

Religion serves as the defining purpose of life for many millions of people around the world. The concept that some force greater than the individual has predetermined a course or fate for their lives is attractive because it relieves them of the responsibility of having to determine that course or establishing some purpose for themselves. If one dies inappropriately young, or endures a lifetime of poverty, then religion offers the excuse that there was some greater purpose at work.

But what if there is no universal purpose? Humans are but a blip on the timeline of history. The cosmos got along just fine developing itself and evolving and doing things before we came along. What if our presence here is of no consequential purpose at all, but rather a momentary sideline amusement while everything else takes a breather? We are, after all, apparently hell-bent upon our own destruction. How can that be of any benefit to the greater good of creation? What benefit does the universe derive from our presence?

At the moment, I’m not seeing any great over-arching purpose to humanity existing beyond this current stage of universal evolution. I suppose that, in some form or fashion, we might provide a link to whatever it is that comes next, but by the time that stage of existence comes into being we, as a species, will have long been forgotten. Perhaps, we might want to consider changing our approach.[/one_half_last]

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Education
September 18, 2015
charles i. letbetter -education

charles i. letbetter - education

Think A Minute (2013)

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.—James A. Baldwin

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]My mother was a teacher in more ways than one. Yes, there are a  few people out there who endured, and survived, the trials and tribulations of being in her classroom. She didn’t stop teaching when she walked out of the classroom, though. Education, she believed, was something that began the moment one woke up of the morning and didn’t end until one was unconscious at night. She saw the potential for making every moment a teaching moment, and she wasn’t going to let one’s education be incomplete.

Mom always said she was 5′ 2″ tall. I’m sure she was at one young point in her life. Most of my life she was about an inch shorter than that, and she continued shrinking. That never stopped her, though. She couldn’t be bullied, by administration, student, or parent. To cross her as an adult meant being on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing that damn-near drew blood. To cross her as a child meant bending over, grabbing your ankles, and being thankful  her arthritis prevented her from swinging that paddle as strongly as she might. In her mind, the first thing one needed in an education was discipline and respect. One didn’t begin learning until those two things were present.

At the same time, though, Mother could be incredibly compassionate. Being the preacher’s wife in a small town meant she usually knew when a student’s family was struggling. School policy prevented her from helping a child directly, but she would find a way to make sure a child had food at home, or clean clothes, or in at least one case light by which to read. Hugs were something she handed out readily, even long after one left her classroom. After school tutoring wasn’t’ part of a program; it was just something she did as student’s had need.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Mom would not have done well in today’s schools. She understood that an education isn’t just information one learns to regurgitate on command, but how we learn to take that information and improve our lives and the lives of others. She hated standardized tests because she knew that people can’t, and shouldn’t, be standardized and neither can the education system that teaches us. She taught more by  living than by lecturing. She set an example for her students that was worth following.

I look now at how schools have changed and want to cry. We have so woefully underfunded our schools that teachers show up to find absolutely no resources in their classrooms, not even textbooks or dry erase markers. We totally misunderstand the point of education when we think test scores are a sufficient or accurate measure of learning and/or teacher adequacy. Library shelves sit empty because there’s no money for books. We wonder why there’s a teacher shortage in almost every state, not realizing that by the time teachers pay for all their supplies, books for their classrooms, and materials for students, they’re not longer making a living wage!

I’m glad that the little ones can now come home and watch re-runs of Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood on Netflix. They are thoroughly enthralled as they pick up the values education that are no longer part of the school curriculum. Education for them is a very different experience than it was for my sons, and almost unrecognizable compared to my experience. That we have allowed the situation to deteriorate is inexcusable and everyone is at fault. We have no education system when we refuse to learn. Even Mother couldn’t solve that problem. [/one_half_last]

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Ambition
September 17, 2015
charles i. letbetter - ambition

charles i. letbetter - ambition

INTENSITY (2012)

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.—Helen Keller

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]There is something seriously wrong with the world when schools inspire and encourage fear and suspicion rather than learning and ambition. Fear and suspicion lead to remission, fighting, and ultimately war. Learning and ambition lead to cooperation, understand, and progress. That there is anyone in the world who promotes the negative over the positive is a point of concern, but when it is the institutions we entrust to teach and prepare the next generation,  we should be furious.

On Monday of this week, news broke of a 14-year-old student at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas who was arrested for making a clock for his engineering class. Ahmed Mohamed is a young man of Sudanese descent. In fact, his father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, ran for President of Sudan earlier this year. The whole purpose of putting Ahmed in the Texas school was to encourage his ambition in science and technology. Unfortunately, when Ahmed’s English teacher saw the briefcase containing the clock, he didn’t bother to ask the student what it was. Instead, the teacher made the false assumption that it must be a bomb and reported Ahmed to the principal, who in turn called the police.

I find it interesting that this happened at a school named after the late five-star general, Douglas MacArthur. The tough-as-nails general with a reputation for pushing his troops to their very limit, for accepting nothing short of victory, would almost certainly be embarrassed by the school. General MacArthur once said,

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

The general understood that fear is always the enemy, and that ambition and learning are the solution.

School principal Daniel Cummings (972.600.7370, dacummings@irvingisd.net) made a grave error in choosing to punish Ahmed for his ambition, and deserves to be held accountable for such an egregious mistake. Fortunately, more intelligent forces across the country have attempted to make up for the school’s inadequacy. Tech giant Google invited Ahmed to it’s tech fair this weekend. Facebook founder, and soon-to-be-dad, Mark Zuckerberg invited Ahmed to visit him at Facebook’s headquarters. Officials at NASA have reportedly even offered Ahmed a job (Ahmed was wearing a NASA t-shirt when he was arrested). The growth of the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed has been dramatic.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The bigger response came from much higher up. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan tweeted: “We need to be encouraging young engineers, not putting them in handcuffs. #IStandWithAhmed”

Then, almost immediately after Duncan’s tweet, the President weighed in with: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained further:

“The president, like many of us, was struck by the news reports of this particular incident. The fact is, America’s best teachers and our schools and our best schools, at least, nurture the intellectual curiously of all of our students. And this instance, it’s clear that at least some of Ahmed’s teachers failed him.

Ambition is one of the traits of humanity that differentiates us from animals. More than relying on instinct, we have the ability to push ourselves to do things we don’t necessarily have to do. Ambition, fueled by curiosity and the desire to move forward, is what leads to innovation, progress, and invention. Without ambition, we are no better than sloths sleeping on a tree limb.

The model shown in today’s picture was also a person of considerable ambition. Short of stature, she pushed herself, and her body, to achieve a level of strength and muscle tone that enabled her to perform feats of physical strength not generally attributed to people of her gender or profession. Her ambition led her to excel.

Earlier in his administration, President Obama was quoted as saying:

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

Regardless of what we want to do with our lives, ambition is required to succeed. When ambition is suppressed, discouraged, and even punitively punished, we destroy that which drives us to become better, that which improves our society, that which moves us forward. We need ambition, not only for ourselves but for others. We should never accept anything less.[/one_half_last]

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Point of Origin
September 16, 2015
charles i. letbetter - point of origin

charles i. letbetter - identity

Royalty (2011).Model: Danelle French. Face paint: Jennifer Baxter

That means that every human being – without distinction of sex, age, race, skin color, language, religion, political view, or national or social origin – possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity.—Hans Kung

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]For as long as I can remember, I have had to answer the question, “where are you from?” No matter where I’ve lived, with no regard to how long I might have lived there, the accent with which I speak has never quite matched where I live. I’ve never minded answering the question because it seems reasonable to me that point of origin is a central part of our identity. What amuses me, though, is that as I get older and tell people I’m from Oklahoma (forget those first 12 years in Kansas), they sometimes give me a quizzical look and respond, “No you’re not. You don’t sound or act like anyone from Oklahoma.” For that, I am grateful.

Point of origin has always, throughout history, been an important part of our identity. To which tribe one belonged could mean the difference between free or slave, or even life and death. Our species began as nomadic foragers, roaming to where ever food and shelter were most readily available, but the place from where we started, our point of origin, has always been, and strongly remains, a critical factor upon which judgments, whether just or not, have been made. Inherent social construct inserts a geographic tag into our identity from which there is no escape.

One of the reasons our point of origin so often comes into question is because we, as a species, don’t stay put. Even after all the building of cities and farms, creating and fighting over national borders, and even cruel attempts at keeping people in or out of certain places, we are now more migrant than we have ever been. Our point of origin is but a GPS marker from which all our travels begin. Move so much now that scientists who study such things are referring to the 21st century as the age of the migrant. Not only are we already moving around a lot, it’s going to get worse.

We are all migrants, not because we are born as such, but we cannot help becoming such, leaving our point of origin, sometimes by choice, but with increasing frequency because we have no choice. By engaging in this conversation, it is important to understand the vocabulary. An emigrant is someone known by where they have left. An immigrant is known by where they are going. Coming or going, though, there are over one billion people on the move at any given time, and that number is growing rapidly.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Thomas Nail, a philosopher at the University of Colorado, recently published a book, The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford University Press, 2015), in which he explains:

People today relocate to greater distances more frequently than ever before in human history. While many people may not move across a regional or international border, they tend to change jobs more often, commute longer and farther to work, change their residence repeatedly, and tour internationally more often. Some of these phenomena are directly related to recent events, such as the impoverishment of middle classes in certain rich countries after the financial crisis of 2008, subsequent austerity cuts to social welfare programs, and rising unemployment. The subprime mortgage crisis led to the expulsion of millions of people from their homes worldwide (9 million in the United States alone). Foreign investors and governments have acquired 540 million acres since 2006, resulting in the eviction of millions of small farmers in poor countries, and mining practices have become increasingly destructive around the world—including hydraulic fracturing and tar sands. This general increase in human mobility and expulsion is now widely recognized as a defining feature of the twenty-first century.

Whether to keep us out, keep us in, or simply segregate us for statistical purposes, both societies and governments are concerned with our point of origin as a defining piece of information. There is no escape. The more we move, the more we are connected to where we began. Our great migration is a tremendous force of social change and progress. The world into which one is born holds little resemblance to the one in which we die.

So, more than ever, there remains this question: where are you from?[/one_half_last]

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