Another new blog to enjoy

Her given name is Jessica but She goes by Foster Communications on Her blog. I will stick with Her given name, because Women's names are beautiful and should never be abbreviated or substituted.

As with so many of my blog friends, I can't remember exactly how we found each other.

We have the same career, school PR. That makes, along with Chase, three in this blog circle who work in education. Interesting.

I'm adding Her to my list because She is simply a neat person, with a great blog. I realize that I already have met too many wonderful people to keep up with, and on average, I visit each person on my list about twice a month these days. But I simply cannot resist.

Little Scientists

The other day at work, I was clearing out an ancient portfolio to do with the District Science Fair. One page caught my eye and I rescued it from the To Be Recycled pile.

It was a page of tips on helping to awaken childrens' interest in science.

Two of them, in particular, interested me:

First, it is just as important to involve Girls in science as it is boys. That ought to be common knowledge by now. Girls can, and should be encouraged, to do anything (anything intelligent!) that boys can do. If you don't believe that Girls/Women are just as smart as boys/men and just as capable, I feel sorry for you, as this world -- in which Women are succeeding and achieving wherever the artificial barriers of bad laws and faulty tradition have been demolished -- must really be confusing for you.

Secondly, parents should let their children take apart old appliances. It whets their natural curiosity and leads to questions and interest in how things work.

It sounds like a great idea but it certainly requires some supervision, as a lot of appliances these days have dangerous parts inside, and those shouldn't be on the list.

But today at work, I was looking at an old, broken camera. It seems perfectly safe and I think I'll take it home and let my Niece have at it with a screwdriver.

Dread

The day will come, when I make my every-other-year flight home to see Mom and Dad, when the silver streaks now in their hair will have become monochrome.

The day will come when their strength will be gone.

The day will come when I have to say goodbye.

Yes, it's a very depressing thought, but I believe it is normal for someone my age, first as an unpleasant whisper of possibility when I was a child, then more and more insistent with each passing year, today almost unbearably loud within my soul.

We all feel a little wistful sadness when a little one outgrows babyhood, and when the cute preteen becomes a gangly and independence-seeking adolescent, and when the adolescent moves away from home. But we also feel joy in each of those moments, for it represents maturation, progress, not decline.

I feel no joy in reminders of mortality writ upon the faces of the parents that I love.

Andorra for April, Number Four in my geography studies

A wave crashes upon the beach, dropping upon the sand its treasures. Perhaps it leaves a shell, a bit of driftwood, a disoriented crab, a strand of seaweed.

So it is, too, with the great ocean of time. It carries people and ideas and then leaves them, high and dry, a curiosity upon the sands of history.

Wedged between France and Spain, in the Pyrenees Mountains that separate those two nations, is a sovereign state just twice the size of Washington, D.C., USA.

In my studies of world history, I am still in ancient Rome. Christianity is still a novelty, and Mohammed and his armies, nearly six hundred years in the future. So I know almost nothing about the great Frankish king Charlemagne, who in the ruins of post-Roman Europe found himself battling mightly against the onslaught of Islam.

In those days, Andorra was born, one of the buffer states established by that king to prevent the Muslims in Spain from over-running Christian France.

By odd and obscure quirks of history, Andorra is the only remaining example of those buffer states, and though Charlemagne has mouldered in the dust for more than 1,300 years, and though the borders of the nations of Europe have shifted all around it, Andorra has retained her independence.

The weary waitress clearing tables at Dinah's Diner in Kansas or Idaho may dream of France, or of the blue seas that lap the coasts of Spain or Greece -- but who beyond the academics or geography buffs -- and the 64,716 people who live there, and their immediate neighbors, has ever heard of Andorra?

Like the Amish of Pennsylvania; like the monks of the ancient, almost extinct Christian sects who zealously guard the holy places of the Holy Land; like the sunken wreck of the battleship Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Andorra is an artifact of history, flotsam in the tide of time.

But it is also a living nation, proud of its traditions, proud to have officially joined the United Nations on July 28, 1993. On that day, Pres. Oscar Ribas declared, "Avui es un dia historic per a Andorra."

I interpret that as, "Here is a historic day for Andorra."

He continued: "Andorra ja no es un vestigi del dret feudal i medievval, sino un Estat homologat segons els criteris del dret internacional modern."

My perhaps faulty translation would be: "Andorra is not just a vestige of the feudal era, but a state that meets the criteria of the modern era."

We are strongest and richest, together

A strange, disturbing and fatally-flawed, misconception seems to fester in the minds of some men – hopefully no Women – in this world.

It is in regards to male-Female relationships, in regards to discussions of equality and superiority, gender roles and such.

When such discussions come up online, and in real life, too, a man who declares that Women have made significant contributions to civilization, that They are quite capable of doing anything that men can do and, perhaps, even do it better, is declared to have been “whipped.” He is said to be afraid. He is advised to “turn in his manhood.”

This puzzles me.

The conundrum is perhaps analogous to the typical attitude towards male cheerleaders or ballet dancers. What is a male cheerleader? He is a man who enjoys the close company of Women, who certainly doesn’t feel threatened by Them, and who must indeed be very manly, in a physical way – able to lift Them up with both grace and power.

Yet what is the stereotype of such a guy? As fruity, as Feminine, etc.

Seems to me the strongest, most manly kind of guy is one who celebrates the power, beauty and capabilities of Women. Who is not so weak as to hide behind stereotypes or shield himself from the competition of Female colleagues with a so-called glass ceiling. Who is fully confident of his manhood and does not find it threatened in a way by having a Female CEO, by sharing household duties with his spouse or by, really, anything at all.

Seems to me such a man is the happiest kind of man, confident, strong, living in a world in which Women are not his enemies nor his downcast servants to be “kept in their place” by tradition and brute force. By recognizing Them as his equals, by recognizing Their worth and intelligence, he finds himself daily in a position to be edified, inspired and enlightened.

He might even step beyond that and recognize in his heart that Woman is even, just a little bit, superior and thus he will walk daily in the company of Goddesses – and what could be more pleasurable than that?

Nowhere in these scenarios is there any pretense of fear, is there any emasculation. He is strong, he is happy, he is blessed. His manly strengths and talents pair with the Womanly strengths and talents of the Women in his world, to create the ultimate synergy.

Woman’s strengths, Woman’s gifts, are like fine gold in society’s bank. We would all scorn or pity the fool who stumbled into a cave full of treasure and then walked back out declaring that his own pocketful of pennies was more valuable and he had no interest in adding the cavern’s bounty to his own.

We would also wonder about the man who owned a gallery of fine art but refused to add anything more to it because he insisted that no art in the world could possibly be better than what he already had.

And if I had five dollars and someone offered me five more, would I turn it down?

No, my way of life is not about fear. Not about being a wimp. I am a relatively strong man, I think, physically and mentally. I do not fear the progress and success of Women. I celebrate it, not from compulsion but of my own free and happy will.

To me, it feels like simple common sense.

Call me Choppie

I'm done ranting for a while. Hey, we all have buttons to be pushed. Mine include evil governments and bad drivers.

My boss resurrected an old, old word today. He was talking with me and said the following, "[ECD], sometimes in your voice it's very easy to tell that you are nervous. You sound very choppy. You need to be more smooth. Cool Hand Luke, you know."

And I remembered, and told him, that that very word, choppy, came up nearly 20 years ago, from my high school English teacher.

She said that I had talent but that my writing was a little too choppy. I have never forgotten those words.

So I talk choppy and I write choppy. Is there no hope for me?