I am … unhindered by talent

Back in 1980 I spent 10 weeks in Montevideo, Uruguay, as an AFS exchange student. I had a wonderful time, and should probably write a long, rambling memoir of it, but that’s not gonna happen this afternoon. No, children, today I will speak of one of the many things I came to know on that trip, namely yerba mate. Mate is a dried leaf that is sort of like tea. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but it was the social drink of choice when I was there, especially among the men, and I got quite fond of it while I was there.

As part of my souvenir purchasing before returning home, I bought a full set of the gear for, you see, drinking mate is a fairly complex affair. The standard drill (at least when I was in Uruguay) was to put the dried leaves in a hollowed out gourd cup; the cup could be small for individual use, or quite large for a group to share. You drank out of a metal straw with a strainer built in to the lower end so you didn’t suck up all the leaf bits. Small amounts of hot water was poured into a part of the gourd, and you then drank that water. Once an area of the gourd had lost its flavor, you moved to a different area.

I brought back a gourd with a little leather cup (so it would sit on a table without rolling off), a straw, and a kilo of mate (which got a lot of attention at the Miami airport). Unfortunately everyone at home was pretty put off; Dad said it tasted like the runoff from a hay stack, and that was fairly representative of the response. In Uruguay mate had been a social event, and in the absence of any interest back home, mate gently drifted out of my life.

A few weeks ago, however, it drifted right back in. We were at our wonderful Pomme de Terre Food Coop and there on the shelf was Mate in tea bags(!) from EcoTeas. I almost didn’t get any ’cause it just seemed so weird to have it in a tea bag, but in the end I just couldn’t resist, and I’m glad I didn’t. The taste brought back lots of fond memories, and I’ve really enjoyed drinking it (nearly done with my 50 bag box!). It’s obviously not quite the same as it was in Uruguay (if for no other reason than I’m quite a different person than I was 25 years ago!), but it’s still like having an old friend back. I just had a cup with some New Glarus Bakery cookies after a fine lunch of WeatherGirl’s excellent Moroccan chicken. What a happy jumble of culinary cultures :-).

The EcoTeas folks seem to really know their stuff, and sell not just the mate leaf (both loose and in bags), but a nice range of accessories (e.g., gourds and straws) in case you want to get into it more seriously.

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Sub-Evil Boy (and about 80 other kids) just finished another crazy week at the Prairie Fire summer theater camp in Barrett, Minnesota. This summer’s play was their adaptation of Peter Pan, which was a bit odd since Sub-Evil had played the part of John in the high school production of Peter Pan just a few months ago.

To continue the amusing coincidences, Sub-Evil was cast in this production as Michael, so he got to play his younger brother. It was his first time cast as a lead role in the summer camp, which was really fun for him, and he handled the role wonderfully (in my totally biased parental opinion). Well done all!

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Just after finishing the previous long rant I stumbled across these great shots from Clearly Ambiguous over on Flickr. WeatherGirl and I both thought they looked like a creepy alien things from a sci-fi thriller. Yikes!

Thanks to C.A. for these and many other very cool shots!

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You know that as you and your kids get older, they serve an increasingly crucial role in keeping your old-fart-self in touch with what’s hip and trendy so that you can actually talk to one’s students without sounding like a complete fossil. My students have been talking about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for quite a while, but (while intrigued) we never actually watched an episode until Sub-Evil Boy came home from space camp all enthused. (Apparently they stayed up late in the TV lounge a time or two.) So we’ve been watching steadily for several weeks now, and when they’re hot they’re about as funny and clever an analysis of current events as I’ve heard since I discovered my Dad’s Mort Sahl LPs back in high school. (This was the late 70’s and I didn’t have a clue who all these people were - I thought Dulles was just an airport - but it was amazing what I managed to learn about the Eisenhower years just from listening to Sahl freestyle on two LPs.)

We just watched yesterday’s broadcast, and it was definitely one for the books, with a great interview and some truly classic pieces. One big fave of both WeatherGirl and I was about the recent crash of Air France flight 358. Jon Stewart:

Within 2 minutes all 309 passengars and crew got out alive. A remarkable testament to the training of the crew and the emergency personnel and their competence.

They followed that summary with numerous clips of people calling it “The miracle by the highway”. We cut back to Stewart who goes through a flurry of his trademark facial pyrotechnics and announces (in reference to an earlier piece about Novak swearing on air on CNN) “That is bullshit”:

A miracle, defined in my dictionary, is ‘a marvelous event manifesting a supernatural act of God’. To me the only thing that was a miracle in that situation was the lighting that hit the plane. That was the act of God. If anything, God was trying to kill these people. His plan was foiled by the crew’s satanic competance! Can’t someone take someone take some human credit for a job well done?!?

I really loved that. I’ve always found it really frustrating when people are unwilling to give humans credit for human accomplishments. If our lives are going to have purpose and intent, we have to believe that we can create goals that give our lives meaning and that we as individuals, groups, and societies can make progress towards those goals. In a key way this is a central part of our “growing up”. A crucial part of kids’ development is the transition from external goals (doing what their parents and teachers tell them) to the ability to set and work towards their own internal goals. Why in the world can’t we seem to get that sorted out as a species?

Another wonderful moment (in a depressingly icky way) came on their new segment “The less you know”. This segment focusses on the (all too many) ways that Our Fearless Leader and his Many Minions are working to keep us in the dark. One of the issues they looked at this time were the problems people like the ACLU have had getting information on what exactly was happening in Abu Ghraib (where some U.S. service personnel were torturing Iraqi prisoners). Luckily The Daily Show brings clarity to the issue by providing us with a clip of Bill O’Reilly saying (and I quote)

Clearly more pictures of Abu Ghraib help the terrorists, as do Geneva Convention protections and civilian lawyers. So there’s no question the ACLU and judges that side with them are terror allies.

What an incredibly stupid comment. If that’s O’Reilly’s idea of democracy then there’s no democracy left in the U.S. worth defending. Luckily Stewart has a sense of democracy worth fighting for and still manages to be on national television, so there’s hope.

The happy thing about O’Reilly’s quote is that it’s always nice when fools are so transparently foolish in public, but one has to wonder how his bosses can continue to pay to be associated with that idiot.

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Every now and then the universe provides small signs that not all is lost and the looneys don’t completely run the show. The fact that March of the penguins is selling out in Madison (and that the Wisconsin State Journal had the sense to quote my son and mother on the issue) gives me a warm fuzzy feeling (which, as the film makes clear, can only be shared metaphorically by the birds themselves). Go here for Sub-Evil Boy’s take on it all. And definitely go see the movie if at all possible - it’s seriously cool (ho, ho, ho). (Apparently the voice overs vary quite a lot according to country/language. We saw the U.S. release with Morgan Freeman’s excellent narration. Can’t say anything about other releases.)

Perhaps more importantly, the success of blogs like Pharyngula is a real sign that (talented) individuals (with way too much time to spend on their blog) can make a broad and signficiant impact without the backing of Big Corporations or Big Media or Big Much Of Anything. As evidence of this wondrous state of affairs, Pharyngula got a brief mention in Newsweek and (far cooler) Paul will be interviewed on BBC’s 5 Live program (a total fave of WeatherGirl’s). The interview will air Monday, so we’ll all have to tune in to listen.

Do you think people would mind if I started sleeping outside Paul’s office door?

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The Morris Sun-Tribune reports in this article (registration needed :-( ) that the waterpark initiative (discussed earlier in the context of the school levy) failed by a vote of 876 against and 543 in favor. Mayor Wilcox has not given up, however:

“It’s not a dead issue,� she said. “It will come back. And sooner than later.�

I’m glad that the city is going to bring it up again, as I think it deserves a second hearing. I do hope, however, that they wait until after the school levy is decided in November. I fear, though, that they’ll put it on that ballot and we’ll have them both to choose from, which will only confuse matters.

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Below is a letter to the editor of the Morris Sun-Tribune that appeared in the 27 July 2005 edition (requires registration :-( ) under the title (of their choosing) of “Pool or no pool, support levy”. This was written by Sub-Evil Boy and I while we were in Wisconsin, and then dictated over the phone to WeatherGirl, who made some edits and took it in to the paper. Only his name and mine appeared at the bottom, but she contributed a lot and arguably should have been there as well. (We tend to not have both of us sign letters, though, so we can send in twice as many without it looking quite so aggressive :-).)

Last Thursday 21st July 2005 the Morris Area School Board agreed to send a $385 per pupil levy to the voters in November. On Aug. 2, we also have an opportunity to vote on a new outdoor water park. The schools are crucial infrastructure and must be supported for the health and well being of the community. The water park, while a positive amenity, is hardly a necessity. If you feel you can vote for both, do so. If not, however, we would urge you to support the students, staff and in the long run, the community by voting for the school levy.

For more information on the school levy please visit http://www.morrisqualityschools.org.

The vote’s tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes!

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