Intervention?

While eating lunch with my mentoree today, I witnessed a typical interaction for that age group. Really, a typical interaction for any age group -- but as we age, we learn to refine the methods of our meanness.

On one side is a Girl who obviously has a crush on him -- maybe doesn't even realize that's what it is. We'll call Her Natasha. In the middle is my mentoree, a fifth grade student. Call him Michael. On the other side is some boy in the class who is friends with Michael. Call him Shawn.

At lunch today, Natasha obviously has a beef with Shawn. He is to be ostracized, apparently for resorting with his other friends to namecalling of Her and Her friends. Michael wants to be friends with both of them. Natasha instructs Michael not to. She teases him, pokes him, scolds him, warns him not to.

I am supposed to be a "buddy" to Michael. I am not supposed to lecture or compel him to make moral decisions. I presume that means his friends as well. The idea for the mentoring program is that I am to be a friend, not another authority figure.

So how do I proceed? I finally tell Natasha, gently but firmly, to leave Michael alone because I would hate to have to report Her behavior to their teacher. I don't know without reading Michael's mind how much of Her behavior crosses the line from teasing between friends to outright bullying. Certainly if the roles were reversed and some boy was pinching, poking and arm twisting a Girl, I would immediately intervene.

Then I say, "We should all get along." Gack, sounds like some pot-huffing hippie.

Then I talk with admiration about my best friend in high school who made friends with everyone, the cool kids and the ones on the edge.

Natasha thinks about it for a few moments. She has a murmured conversation with Shawn. Then She tells Michael: "You can be friends with Shawn if you want."

I have never been a parent. So I do not have the skills that parents develop. Did I intervene unnecessarily in this instance? Or should I have done even more?

The future is decidedly Female?

Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project, has written a fascinating column this week, entitled, "The Future is Decidedly Female." He based some of his reasonings upon an article in The Atlantic, "The End of Men," by Hannah Rosin.

Their arguments are sound and convincing, for a thesis that the modern, post-industrial society may be better suited to Women.

In education, in industries showing growth patterns, even in life satisfaction studies for today's productive age-60 and up life stage, Women are taking the lead.

These are simple, emperical facts, not wishful thinking on the part of ardent Feminists.

For me, it raises a number of questions. I have always believed that Women have a slight edge of greatness over men in virtually every aspect of life, except the primitive application of brute force, which has historically been used to hold them back. (I.e, if you have an opiniated Woman in your village who won't kowtow to male leadership ... declare Her a witch and drag Her to the square to be burnt.)

But I am a man myself and must examine my place in the new reality. It is one thing to malign glass ceilings when they still exist and pat yourself on the back as forward-thinking and magnaminous. It is another thing entirely to behave appropriately in a day-to-day world in which glass ceilings have been shattered and the tide of change calls your bluff.

To make historical parallels: It was one thing to be a West German calling for the Berlin Wall to come down; another thing entirely to live in a reunited Germany. It was one thing to be an ardent, antibellum abolitionist, another thing entirely to handle the reality of post-Civil War free African-Americans competing for employment, living in your neighborhood and dating your daughters.

If the trends continue, and Women come to fully outnumber men in government, business and other fields of life, how shall we men react? Our options are:

To fight back, reimposing male domination;

Surrender and crawl into corners to lick our wounds and stagnate;

Or learn how to handle the new reality in a manner that benefits humanity overall.

Of course, I support the latter option. Fair competition for excellence, can only be a good thing. As Women can learn from men in some aspects of leadership and success, so can men learn from Women.

Very interesting food for thought.

Feeling like Squidward

This comparison will make no sense to a person not well acquainted with the trials and tribulations of Squidward Tentacles. Watch a Spongebob marathon, then get back to me.

I feel like Squidward today after his encounter with Squilliam Fancypants. I just came across the Curriculum Vitae of my old college roommate, who is now Dr. So and So, a professor at Such and Such University, with a list of honors and published works that takes up two pages and is probably heavily abridged.

Me, I'm just me. Same old unremarkable job,nothing published, house in need of repair, growing old in obscurity.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled non-self-pity program.

Of course

It figures ...

That on the morning that my car satellite radio is broadcasting the last chapter of a very exciting book, promptly at 6:30 a.m. as I am on the way to work ...

I would be out of gas and have to stop.

And that the !^%$& pump wouldn't take my card so I would have to go stand in line and prepay inside.

And that three or four schlubs in front of me would be wasting their paychecks and all of our time buying lotto tickets.

And that the clerk would insist that the pump is just fine and send me back outside to try again.

And that of course the pump still wouldn't work and I would have to go back inside with my teeth grit and stand behind another schlub and prepay inside in spite of his protestations that the pump is working just fine.

Things like that are supposed to happen on Mondays, not Fridays.

Dog saga

I saw her last week, a blur of white, as she darted away from my car as I pulled into the driveway.

Animals of all kinds come and go through my little neck of the woods and it's live and let live. Bird-stalking cats, my least favorite, get a hiss or a hose blast, nothing more.

But this little dog stayed around. A full day passed and I realized she wasn't passing through on her way back home somewhere. She had been abandoned. No collar, no tags. She was starving and miserable, scratching fleas non-stop. And she appeared to be pregnant.

That was Thursday. I made the decision to get involved. That is not done lightly. You can't get started, then quit when complications arise. I warmed up a piece of sausage and sat on the ground and nibbled a little of it to get her attention. She stayed a few yards away, watching warily. After about a half hour, she retrieved a piece that I tossed gently in her direction.

We bought some dog food and I laid it on a plate and put a blanket beside it. She came to the plate, ate her fill and went to sleep on the blanket. Still, was not willing to come close to me.

Saturday we sat apart on the ground for a while. Then I got up and went off to plant a pine sapling at the edge of the woods. Suddenly, she was there, beside me, sniffing at my shoe. She did not dart away as I petted her head. The gulf of fear had been crossed. There are no suitable words for such a moment.

Long story short: We can't keep her -- we have an old, fearful bird already in residence in our home. But a good, trustworthy friend has just agreed to take her in. The dog is not pregnant, the vet says. The fleas and the torment of their itch is gone, thanks to a bath and medicine. And no more will she ever need to fear the raising of a human hand.

What a tumultuous week we have had. How precious is a happy ending!

The Law of Give and Take

... If I remove a book from the shelf in my room and sell it somewhere, my library is slightly diminished, though I may gain a dollar or two for my wallet. Each time that I remove another book, the shelves grow more bare. Now suppose that thousands of books are being removed from thousands of shelves, for sale, and the ones not sold are being buried forever in massive piles outside the city limits.

When I see the glorious abundance piled up in my local grocery store these days, I sometimes think: Each apple, each cucumber, each banana, represents a little bit of vitality from the soil of some farm somewhere. Each one not sold will end up in a landfill, its quotient of biomass locked up indefinitely. Each one sold and eaten may fare somewhat better, spread as a bio-solid somewhere, but still, the farmland whence it originated is the poorer.

Will there come a day when our agricultural soils are impoverished beyond repair, our breadbasket lands as bare of nutrients for life as the blowing sands of a desert dune?

More and more as I grow older, I am recognizing there is no free lunch, no action without a consequence, no action without an equal and opposite reaction. It is natural law, whether in the wilderness or in the societies of humankind. Cutting down a forest to build a gas station has a consequence. Trees will be burned and carbon released. Those animals which cannot quickly flee, such as box turtles, will be killed and over their bodies and the soil a hard concrete shell will be poured, blocking the rain that for eons soaked into that ground and replenished life.

Passing laws to "give" everyone "free" health care has a consequence, too. When one receives, another must have given, somehow, somewhere, to make it happen ... by choice or by force.