Significance

Posted on Feb 17, 2009 in Writing | 0 comments

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me if today’s post lacks cohesion. My mind and heart are in several places.

The last week had not been kind. Car repairs, financial uncertainty and health concerns have added to the laundry list of normal everyday stresses and have dominated my waking hours, as well as stubbornly draining my non-waking hours.

In fact, I was just about to email Karen and ask if someone could cover today’s post, when I got a call to tell me about the death of a friend. I’m not sure why I decided to write the post after all. Maybe it’s as simple as knowing that my friend would have berated me for shirking my responsibilities.

His death has shaken me, to be sure. He was not a healthy man, and in fact was taken to the hospital 2 weeks ago. But he had begun to recover. The weight his wife and son were carrying on their shoulders was beginning to lift. And I suppose that all thought he would recover because he was so stubborn.

But it is not the moderate surprise of his death that has shaken me. His son, who has become a rather close friend in the last couple of years, is only seventeen years old—precisely the age at which I lost my own father. I was very close friends with my father, as was this young man with his own father, and all day my thoughts have lingered on the difficulties he will face in becoming a man, without the guidance and support of his father.

It’s a fine challenge for a character—to be thrust into a situation he is unprepared for. But sometimes the things that make good fiction make for a bad reality.

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

Challenging Creativity

Posted on Feb 10, 2009 in Writing | 2 comments

To be creative you must be challenged.

There is a chef on the local news channel who seems to have lost his creative spark. Here’s are a few of his recent segments:

• Broccoli & white beans side dish
• Egg, Bacon and Romaine Salad
• Oven Roasted Chicken and Potatoes with Braised Red Cabbage

While there’s nothing wrong with these recipes, there’s a definite lack of originality that one expects from a professional chef. It doesn’t even seen that he takes much effort to name his recipes. We sometimes joke that were he to publish a book of his recipes it would be called “The Dishes I prepared on the Local News During the Calendar Year 2008.”

For a while now, this is how I’ve felt about my own presence here on Write Anything. It’s been nearly three years now, and each week it’s more difficult to come up with a topic. And even if I do have an idea, I find my own writing lacking.

This is what happens when creativity is not challenged. Creativity is a process of conflict, of success and failure, or experimentation. This is one of the reasons that the starving artist is such a powerful cliche—because it’s so often true.

So I’m looking forward to the upcoming changes on Write Anything. We’re making changes designed to challenge ourselves, and our readers, to be better writers. I’ll leave it to other to unveil the specifics, but I think it’s fair to say that following this blog will be a much more active experience than it has been in the past.

I, for one, am looking forward to the challenge.

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

Are We Devolving Ourselves?

Posted on Feb 6, 2009 in Family, Society, Theories | 5 comments

Are we causing our devolution? This is a question that has been bothering me, off and on, and to varying degrees, for many years now.

Most of the computer using world (and hence the people with access to this post) live in one of the safest environments that has ever existed on this planet. We have a security force, a military force, government agencies, and a rather robust collection of laws all of which are there, essentially, to make sure we don’t die.

Likewise there is an entire healthcare network who’s purpose, aside from making enormous profits, is to keep us alive and healthy so we can keep buying products.

We no longer have to worry about being hunted or eaten. While murder is still a problem it’s no where near the problem it has been in other historical periods.

But does all this come at a cost? Through litigation, overprotection and advanced science are we hurting our own species? Are we creating a world that our own children won’t be able to live in?

This idea took seed long ago when, during a casual conversation, a friend began to rail against school speed zones (his rant was intended as pure humor, and at the time was taken that way). He lived near an elementary school and a high school as was often frustrated by the 2 miles of 15 MPH he had to endure to get from his house to the nearest major street.

When I was a kid, he reasoned, there were no speed zones. We had crossing guards who made the kids wait until it was safe to cross. So, we learned how to safely cross the street. Now, there are speed zones, and the cars must wait for the kids, no matter where they choose to cross. So, today’s kids learn that they can cross whenever and wherever they want to.

Although the argument is quite funny, especially when my friend was in one of his moods, there’s a nugget of truth in there. To expand it out to it’s evolutionary impact you could say that it used to be, that kids who couldn’t learn to cross the street got hit by cars, and hence were less likely to produce offspring.

In our society there are far too many examples of this to count. Lead based paint is now a no-no. Why? Because some kids would eat it, get sick, keep eating it and eventually get lead poisoning. And their parents sued someone. So now there is no lead-based paint. But why did that kid keep eating it when hundreds of thousands of other kids ate paint chips, got sick and decided they’d had just about enough of that? Maybe the kid who keeps eating paint shouldn’t be producing offspring.

Now one of the sticky spots I find myself in here, is that if I continue this line of thinking I get to a group of people that includes myself. Modern medicine makes a long normal life possible for people who in previous ages would have died off early. When I was 12 years old I had a massive asthma attack. In order for me to survive I had to have fast transportation, a close hospital, well trained, readily-available doctors, and modern medicines. And even with all that it was close. Even 20 years earlier and I probably wouldn’t have seen my 13th birthday. So, at just about any other time in human history I would not have had the opportunity to pass along my genetic makeup.

If this theory is correct, and we are in fact damaging our own ability to survive in our own environment, there could be many repercussions, some long term, but some much more immediate.

In the immediate, our society may have to deal with a new generation that is increasingly unable to solve problems. Back to the speed zones for a moment…there is a certain level of cognition and abstract reasoning that allows a young child to understand, “if this adult is stopping me from crossing the street until the cars are past, then maybe I should always wait to cross the street until the cars have past.” And maybe giving kids the benefit of speed-zones until they are out of high school is a little too much coddling.

But in the long term we may be hurting our species. Are we burdening our genetic pool with too many people who are unable to learn how to cross a street? Or who are unable to learn not to eat paint chips? By keeping people with illnesses alive before we can correct these illnesses, are we stocking our genetic pool with scores of “manageable” illnesses. Is our rapid medical advancement creating a genetic dependence on advanced medicine?

On the other hand, I could just be upset that my 13-year-old, doesn’t know how to properly cross the street.

Really? A Parade?

Posted on Feb 3, 2009 in Rants, Sports | 2 comments

Today the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania threw a parade for the Pittsburgh Steelers who, this past Sunday, won the Super Bowl.

Why?

I’ve never understood the logic behind throwing a parade for teams that win a championship—or for that matter, any athlete who wins any athletic competition.

I get that it’s an accomplishment. I get that it’s difficult. I get that it can be a wonderful distraction for the thousands, even millions, of fans who toil though the difficulties of everyday life.

But, a parade? Really?

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I tend to think that parades in honor of people should be reserved for particularly noteworthy accomplishments. Firemen, police and military are probably the only professions where I would think a parade is warranted for people who are simply doing their job.

Can we please get over the notion that athletes are heroes? I recognize that there are life lessons to be learned from the hard work that it takes to become a top-caliber athlete. But I’d much rather throw a parade for the kid who grew up in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood who paid his own way through college, or the twelve-year old who kept his head enough to call 911 when his parent had a heart attack.

I don’t even have a problem with the team deciding to throw a big tail-gate party at their own stadium to celebrate a championship.

But the last thing these egotists need is the city to shut down and bow at their feet.