Klytus, I'm bored

Ming the Merciless looks a little like my good friend Steve Voller, though Steve is the polar opposite of a cosmic villain.

I'm listening to audiobooks on subjects I never would have explored years ago. Is that boredom or maturity?

Opportunity, perhaps.

We consume what we encounter.

There's a lifetime of reflection (and consumption) in those five words.

c0

I've watched 1980's Flash Gordon more times than I can count. When cable TV was young and HBO was the only way to watch recent theatrical releases on TV (no Internet, no video stores), we sometimes took it as a challenge to see how many times we could watch a single movie.

c0

BTW, I'm not really bored, I just recalled those immortal words of Ming the Merciless at the opening of this movie and thought they'd make an interesting post.

[2013-02-28]

c0

Bi-polar bear?.

I go from being enormously optimistic to being equally dispirited.

What do you call that. Bi-polar?

Bi-hopeful, perhaps.

[2013-03-31]

c0

No, I'm not bipolar, if you were wondering.

[2013-03-31]

c0

Cracklings

A nuclear explosion.

A reverend on The Today Show: "The true spirit of Christmas is generosity in one's heart." Well, now we know.

[2012-12-26]

c0

Be nice to folks while they're alive. Depending on which way you go when it's your turn, you may not have another chance.

[2013-02-28]

 

c0

The world is crueler than it was. And not just punctuated by episodes of utter depravity, but meaner, uglier, unhappier in-between.

Oh, we still kill and maim and steal and blow each other up, alright.

But we've lost the civility that once characterized the interludes between explosions.

[2013-02-26]

c0

Let every word be as kind as if it were your last.

There's no picture for this post, but it's an important one (and there's an explosion in it, if that helps, a real one, no kidding.)

I talked with my brother Tom on the phone recently and we happened to reminisce about some kids we knew from the old days, Robert Schrader among them.

Robert Schrader attended Bethel Christian School with me for part of a year, 7th grade if I recall correctly

Robert was adopted and had a troubled home life. Mrs Andrus, our 7th Grade Bible teacher (and Pastor Andrus's wife), encouraged us to include him in our activities, and to pray for him when he wasn't in class, which was often.

But other than some absenteeism, I never saw any behavior issues in Robert at school. He was a good kid, intelligent and kind.

Now, there is another Robert in this story: Robert Flowers.

I went to Vernondale Elementary School with Robert Flowers; Flowers got into trouble quite a bit and was a few years older than me. A big kid. He was big to me in elementary school and he was big to Robert Schrader a few years later in junior high school. They became friends and I think young Robert looked up to older Robert.

There is a term for bad things that happen when two people of complementing mindsets get together to create a single mind capable of actions that neither would do alone - folie a deux. And that may fit here.

Well, the two Roberts ran away from home together, and both were killed in a gas explosion. I don't know all the details, but as I recall it, they encountered a shack, there was no electricity, and one of them lit a lighter and ignited a gas leak.

Robert Flowers died in the blast. Robert Schrader died from burns a few days later in the hospital, despite the fervent prayers of a lot of 7th graders.

The last thing I remember Robert Schrader telling me before he ran away was that I didn't like him, which was entirely untrue. I protested at the time, but he insisted. Someone told him so, and he believed it. I remember vividly where we were and what was said.

I have no idea, even now, having thought about this many times for nearly 40 years, how anything I said or did could have conveyed this message.

But that didn't' matter.

Someone disliked Robert so much, they couldn't find enough spite in their own heart, so they invented it in others.

Adults do this too.

c0

Rest in peace, Robert.

[2013-03-26]

c0

A Process Metaphor in Two Pictures

This is how we understand the solar system today, with the sun at the center:

This is how Ptolemy understood it almost 2,000 years ago:

Ptolemy described movements of the sun and planets as though they are revolving around the Earth.

c0

Guest What?
Ptolemy's model works,[1] even though it's unnecessarily complicated and wrong.

And the Moral?
Any model or process or system can sufficiently account for observed behavior if all the parts stay in their orbits (stop at red lights, do their jobs, show up before the bell rings, rise when the judge enters the courtroom, pay bills, etc etc etc ad infinitum.)

Changing a process because pieces aren't cooperating doesn't fix the process. It just changes the process. The same (very human) problems remain.

[2013-03-28]

c0

[1]
Well, mostly. He had to make some adjustments like putting the Earth a little off-center, so he wasn't perfectly precise, but for 2,000 ago, no telescopes and no computers, he did pretty darn good. I'm sure he'd appreciate my approval.

c0

More about Vernondale Elementary School

Caption: The front entrance to Vernondale Elementary School in Millcreek, PA

If you read me fairly regularly, you know I attended Vernondale Elementary School in Millcreek, PA, grades K-6.

I've written a little about Vernondale, most recently here : I Remember Jack > 

I tried to find out more about the school, maybe an Erie Daily Times newspaper article. I didn't find that, but did find this, which has a few pictures and lots of architectural trivia:

 2012 Facility Study of Vernondale Elementary School conducted by the Millcreek Township School District.

You can tell by the way it's written that the underlying message is "we need to update or replace this school," and some one or group is laying the foundation for discussions on contracts, jobs, class size, and other things that were as important 40 years ago as they are today.

Vernondale may not be modern, but it doesn't have to be modern to be a good school. Millcreek Intermediate was "modern" at the time I attended and it felt like a prison. (You half expected to see armed guards patrolling the circular terrace that runs around the perimeter inside. Most of the rooms felt like they were leftovers from the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Nothing lasts forever, and Vernondale will be replaced someday, but not by people that taught or attended there. It'll be replaced by people who don't share the memories it holds.

c0

Caption: The front of Vernondale Elementary School at 1464 Wilkins Road in Millcreek, PA

I have a small piece I wrote years ago about sitting in one of the class rooms and looking at the flag flapping out front in the courtyard. I'll see if I can find it.

The picture at right shows Vernondale today from the street. They've added additional parking over the years. When I was a boy, there was just a U-shaped driveway for the buses and a small lot for maybe 20 cars.

My homeroom was never on the side of the building that faced the flagpole, but occasionally for some reason I was in one of those classes in the morning and I was able to watch the janitor raise the flag as the carabiners clanked against the pole and the rope arced in the wind until he tightened it.

[2013-03-21]

More to say.

c0