Archive for March 2010
Minutiae
A cold Saturday morning dawns clear blue and all sunshine with little regard for the strange dream about that yellow 747 commercial airliner on the ground on Pioneer Trail across from the Flying Cloud baseball fields and the back-up of traffic as investigators moved the population of gawkers lined up, toward rows of banquet tables based on alphabetical order of their last names.
I can’t help thinking such craziness may have been caused by the small setback in hamstring rehabilitation that occurred as I tried dipping my toes in a little floor hockey action last Wednesday evening. I sensed that I wasn’t up to the ability of participation at full speed, but it caused no pain to run at something of a jog. Then, without warning, Ouch!, there it goes again. Tried too hard, too soon, and I’m back to ice and ibuprofen treatments and just that much farther from being my old active self. Frustrating, I tell ya. Like a weird dream with fragments of familiarity sprinkled about.
It is funny how quickly the change occurs from having us comfortable with temps in the 30’s when that first big melt commences to having that same temperature seem so uncomfortably cold after a couple weeks in the 40’s, 50’s and those two days of almost too hot 6o’s in March. Today is sunny, but too cold. Today I don’t have to work, but I can’t do anything athletically strenuous.
Yahoo! I can watch the March Madness tournament and root around in Ancestry.com nooks and crannies. I am just several last names short of being able to present our children with the 32 great, great, great grandparents who contributed to them through us. One striking revelation in just the surnames alone is that their mother provided a lot of Scandinavian lineage and I appear to have mostly English names of folks born in the eastern US and Canada. Both of us share enough Irish to fully warrant wearin’ o’ the green on St. Patties Day, even though I mostly don’t bother.
Of course, for the purposes of the US Census, none of that matters. We are White, you know.
Brrr.
Madness of March
Drama happens
whether we notice or not
while some admit being pissed
their TV routine gets pre-empted
by stupid stupid basketball
yet the games have now been unleashed
and soon we all discover
color schemes rarely seen
coaches in suits that just gleam
athletic gumption unrivaled before
from schools we are soon to adore
along with fans that already do
who bring passion of hope to be felling
big conference powers that be
in a madness that happens in March
for CBS but not NBC
as we pine for that beating of buzzer
with a shot past the arc for 3
and players piling in mayhem
over slaying Goliath which brings
life to their childhood dreams
that we seek as if air to breathe
for to experience vicariously
all the drama as it happens
whether we notice or not
and with so much fresh inspiration
someone tell me, how could we not?
Abundance Awareness
I watched the movie Hurt Locker a couple of nights ago. Among the many scenes that pack a punch, there was one in particular, completely removed from the military battle zones, that really made an impression. In an attempt to avoid spoiling the movie for anyone reading who hasn’t seen it yet, I’ll make reference to a generic situation that happens all the time for combat soldiers. Those that survive and return home find their old life so entirely out of context it is near impossible to function.
Anyone returning from an extended absence, especially if they have been living in a foreign culture, will recognize a mild version of that same feeling of alienation from what was once the comfort of home. I can’t imagine how a soldier is able to accomplish returning from living a life of combat terror in a bleak and primitive setting, to the comforts of frivolous overindulgence found in our society. I’ve struggled with returning from simple camping trips from time to time. It is interesting that what were once the “comforts of home” can conversely appear as undesirable, or even to the extreme of being objectionable.
What is maybe even more fascinating to me, in the long run, is how I have pretty much always found that the disdain for the excesses that come across as annoying, fades away under the relentless onslaught of the return to a daily routine. All too soon I have re-acclimated myself to a state of dull obliviousness for the overabundance of self-indulgences present in our convenient lives. The contempt never lasts. However, if I found myself suddenly in the company of someone suffering a life of scarcity, I would quickly become aware again of the embarrassment of riches we tend to take for granted.
I guess it is kind of like that frog in a pan of water being heated. If you throw him in when it is already hot, he jumps right back out. If you put him in when it is cool and heat it over time, he adjusts and stays in even after it becomes too hot. When everyone I find myself surrounded by tends to take our lifestyle for granted, I tend to fall into a similar pattern.
Census Love
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s a genealogist, I find that I have a great love for census records. More than any other resource (birth, death, and marriage records, do provide plenty of hard data) I prefer the census for the picture it can paint. Or, more precisely, the picture that a series of decade’s census records can paint.
There is actually a limited period of time for which this works best. If you get too far back, say, into the early 1800’s, the information is less complete. You might only get the name of the head of household and a tally of how many free white males of a range of age groups, then free white females, and lastly, slaves. I get to overlook my disgust for the slave category because for the geographic areas I have been researching, either people were too ashamed to report such or they didn’t keep any, because I have yet to see any entries listed under that column. Race discrimination, demonstrated by holding whiteness specifically worthy of counting, above all other humanity, is as blatant as can be, right from the very start. But that is straying back to yesterday’s topic and away from what I had in mind for today, and it totally interrupted my point…
If we look too recent, we don’t find anything later than 1930, because individual information is kept confidential for 72 years by Federal law. In a couple more years, we will finally have access to the details of the 1940 census. Inbetween the early, rudimentary records of the early 1800’s, and the most recent available data of 1930, there is an opportunity to uncover some amazing portraits. Records reveal people growing up in households filled with siblings and hired help, children mature and leave home, and frequently, elderly parents end up living with their kid’s families. It is so great to pull up a record in hopes of attaching it to someone I am researching, and then discovering the familiar names of brothers and sisters listed in the household results.
It is also exciting to view the records for people of the houses nearby, sometimes on the same page, or maybe 1 or 2 pages either direction, to discover relatives by marriage. They often really did marry that girl/guy next door. I have seen people counted as children, and then by the next census, they are married to a neighbor. I like watching the parents age, 10 years at a time, and seeing the number of children grow. Then the older kids disappear, sometimes even as new young siblings continue to be added. Some folks had a heck of a lot of kids, back in the day. Occasionally, parents might be found living alone in their 70’s or 80’s. After all those kids, I can’t say that I blame them.
It seems like people didn’t count so well, because it appears rare that folks actually aged 10 years between decades. That level of detail can matter a lot when you’re trying to make a solid confirmation a couple of hundred years later.
I hardly need to point out how that silly habit of naming children the same as a parent is a nasty hassle for researchers. I never can be sure if, when the numbers seem off, it is because it is actually a different generation person by the same name, or if someone erred on reporting the age of the person I am seeking.
If you are reading here today, I encourage you to do all those future ancestry hunters out there a big favor by thoroughly and accurately filling out your census forms, and doing so promptly. But if you want to mess with those researchers a bit, fudging your actual age is too obvious. How about under the question for race, you select, “Other” and write in Oak or Pine or Maple.
Those Who Make Rules
And you thought I was worked up yesterday! Last evening I found the census form had arrived in the mail and made sure to pull it from the abyss of untended household piles and opened it up to be filled out right away. More and more in the 5th and 6th decades of life I am finding myself uncomfortable being counted as a member of a larger group that includes vocal members whose beliefs and behaviors I find offensive. Sometimes it is as extreme as the group called human beings. We are all human, but the behaviors of some can be so despicable that I find myself preferring something from the animal kingdom. There are even a few versions of tree that would suit me more.
I have also found discomfort with being grouped in categories for spiritual belief and for being male. Now the census has me feeling distinctly uncomfortable declaring my race as white. When they can claim that for the purposes of this census, hispanic or latino is not a race, and then on the following question ask what race a person is, it seems to me to reveal how ridiculously made up the social construct of race really is. Maybe it’s a way to manipulate statistics to the number of non-white races so they won’t officially outnumber the white population in the eyes of those with the power of making the rules.
Since race is defined by law, the definition can be changed to suit whatever purposes are desired. What percentage of African heritage would define me as “black”? Is it the same percentage of Anglo heritage would define an Africa American person as “white”? The history of the American legal system would reveal that it hasn’t been a balanced formula. If the court was petitioned by an individual desiring to be classified as “white,” the definition was allowed to be morphed to continue to exclude whomever those in power chose, and white people were always the ones in power.
Logic would have it that the collection of racial data is justified, and for righteous reasons. How can we help people of non-white races if we don’t know how many people that is and where they are located? One example of the folly of that logic is the results achieved by affirmative action to level the playing field for women and people of color seeking employment. It hasn’t equitably increased the number of people of color getting hired. There was some increase in white women entering the workforce, but they have yet to earn equal pay.
I posit that there is no need to even ask the question about identity of race. It is unnecessary. You don’t need to ask. We are all members of the human race and have the same needs for food, shelter, transportation, education, and health care. Count us, and then serve the public.
I don’t like the simple fact that there is a comparison between white and non-white races. The distinction is racist in the first place. It is all so stupid. I’d rather be a tree.
Fan Frustrations
As many distractions as I mustered to keep from solely focusing on sports outcomes yesterday, the negative vibes of witnessing the abuse that referees allowed to continually occur in last night’s hockey game between Minnesota and North Dakota left me stewing. It’s too bad, given I had a great start to the sunny, warm March day, taking a long, brisk walk with Cyndie that worked wonders to stretch out the ol’ hamstring and lift my spirits. Plus, there’s that news which broke about an hour before the hockey game had even started that the basketball team is in this year’s NCAA Tournament! Such a shame that all that good potential got lost in the angst of my suffering the malicious intentions displayed that seem to have a history of occurring in games I’ve witnessed involving the Dave Hakstol coached UND Souix. It frustrates me to the extreme.
I truly love the game of hockey, but I have never understood the culture of allowance for post-whistle chippy activity that permeates the sport at most all levels. That fighting is still woven into the NHL and other professional leagues is mind boggling enough, but then the game barely looks any different in the levels below where fighting is supposedly not allowed. It starts with checks that would earn unsportsmanlike penalties in most other sports, and includes post-whistle punches, stick hacks, and passive aggressive intentional contact that deftly provokes under a guise of innocence. Nine times out of ten, the officials just skate in and separate all the players, as if that will end it. Ridiculous.
I dream of someday watching a game where every time a player smacks a stick or pushes their glove into a player’s face mask after the whistle has blown, they get sent to the penalty box without hesitation. I’m pretty sure they would get the message real quick. Imagine what the game could be like if they had to channel all that miscreant behavior into actual skating, passing and shooting the puck.
A fan can dream, can’t he?
Time Shifting
Big deal, move the clocks. I’m not a fan of shifting the clocks, but it’s not so significant to me that it causes me to have health problems. I saw one report that indicated an increase in heart attacks in the three days following changing the clocks. This morning was dictated to be the time for moving the clocks ahead one hour to Daylight Saving Time. Imagine dying from this time change. Wow. That’s extreme.
I would expect more heart attacks this time of year to come from trying to follow your hockey team or your basketball team in the post-season tournaments. I join my good friend, Rhonda, in having a weakness for the drama of Minnesota Gopher basketball games. Even as much as we love the team and the sport, it’s hard to endure the rough parts of their performance. They made it easy on us yesterday, (although past experience as a fan leaves one weary that any lead can be lost) as they overwhelmingly dominated Purdue to advance to the championship game of the Big 10 tournament today. This is the first time in the history of the event, which began in 1998, that Minnesota has made it to the championship game.
The Gopher hockey team squeaked out a victory last night against North Dakota to force a third and deciding game today in their playoff for access to the Final Five of the WCHA tournament. So, today I run a much higher risk of succumbing to anxiety as a local college sports fan than from the adjustment of the clock.
At least there will be more sunlight later in the day to console me if the sports outcomes are dreary for me.
Just move the clocks, and suddenly there is more sunlight in the day! It’s a miracle!
Humans. Aren’t we just so silly?
Dew Drops
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early today
when it’s hard to decide
whether to stay in bed
or get up instead
and go outside
there is a part of me
that already knows
plan as I might
all the time just goes
somewhere far
away from here
and that one chance I had
up and disappears
like a wispy wet cloud
of dew drops and tears
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For Friday
Fun for Friday. First, find four faces from forever for fresh friendship flavored familiarity. Freely flail five flexed fingers feigning frightful fits filled full from fluttering fanaticism. Fraternize freely foisted floundering fists fixed fruitfully following flowing flowers from fall festivals forever.
Forget it.
Have you ever noticed how letters and numbers can hold the impression of a specific color in your mind? For me, the letter F looks like this:
After spending many adult hours looking at blocks and magnetic boards of letters and numbers with my infant children as we exercised their amazing minds to learn, it struck me why it would be logical to picture these as associated with a certain color. I have taken a few informal polls to learn the variety of color associations friends have for letters and numbers. I’m of a mind that with enough research we could probably identify which kids played with the same devices in their formative years based on their color associations.
However, there are a few situations that complicate it. New things come along to disrupt our initial associations. One in particular that impacted me was a fascination I developed later in my childhood with color-by-number drawings. That re-oriented my color/number associations, for sure.
If you think about it, one of the most significant things to mess with our early impressions developed of colors of letters must be learning to read books. Every dang letter suddenly becomes black. Just plain black. Isn’t that just packed full of symbolism for a variety of situations related to moving from the colors of our innocence to the structure of life as an adult?
Relative Something 