…you most assuredly are not.

I was standing in line at the grocery store last night. The young male clerk was chatting up (unsuccessfully) the slightly older young woman ahead of me. And that is when he said it. 

“I think I am cool.”

Throughout the rest of my wait and my transaction, I debated telling him the truth. One is either cool or not. Just saying you think you are cool is evidence to the contrary. It is something that is self-evident to others.

This applies to qualities of personality and existence beyond coolness. Spirituality. Bravery. Wisdom.

I left without saying anything about it. In part, it is not my place to disabuse him of his notion. Sooner or later he will more than likely learn the hard way. Also, having spent chunks of my life in Oklahoma, Missouri, Virginia, Oregon, and Alaska, I’ve learned not to argue with the weather. Or fence posts, crazy people, animals, and inanimate objects of all shapes and sizes. 

Arguing with any of the above is pointless and makes you look foolish. Certainly one of the problems I have had in life is recognizing when someone is actually a fence post.

`You got everything?’ said the chauffeur. `You don’t want to pick up your bag or anything?’

`If there’s one thing that life’s taught me,’ said Tricia, `it’s never go back for your bag.’

Just a little over an hour later, Tricia sat on one of the pair of beds in her hotel room. For a few minutes she didn’t move. She just stared at her bag, which was sitting innocently on top of the other bed.

In her hand was a note from Gail Andrews, saying, `Don’t be too disappointed. Do ring if you want to talk about it. If I were you I’d stay in at home tomorrow night. Get some rest. But don’t mind me, and don’t worry. It’s only astrology. It’s not the end of the world. Gail.’

The chauffeur had been dead right. In fact the chauffeur seemed to know more about what was going on inside NBS than any other single person she had encountered in the organisation. Martin had been keen, Zwingler had not. She had had her one shot at proving Martin right and she had blown it.

Oh well. Oh well, oh well, oh well.

Time to go home. Time to phone the airline and see if she could still get the red-eye back to Heathrow. tonight. She reached for the big phone directory.

Oh. First things first.

She put down the directory again, picked up her handbag, and took it through to the bathroom. She put it down and took out the small plastic case which held her contact lenses, without which she had been unable properly to read either the script or the autocue.

As she dabbed each tiny plastic cup into her eyes she reflected that if there was one thing life had taught her it was that there are times when you do not go back for your bag and other times when you do. It had yet to teach her to distinguish between the two types of occasion.

—Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

Learning to distinguish between a real person and a person that is really a fence post (if only on some issues) is the real trick.

“Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.

Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

It is sometimes hard dealing with change. It is harder to help others deal with change. On my last brew day, a neighbor came by to ask advice. He had replaced me as chair of the boy scout troop committee I “retired” from after 10 years of involvement (three years after my son aged out).  The advice sought was regarding the future of the troop given that is now down to six youth, very soon to be only five. This is the minimum size allowed to continue.

Since the cub pack has shown no interest in recent years to join the troop, and recruitment from outside the pack  has also failed, it is now time to face the end of the troop. There are also personnel issues involved among the other adults, so none of this is simple. The options available are: to keep the troop together until the remaining boys Eagle and/or age out; or merge with another troop. The latter option is not particularly desirable as the other area troops are quite different in organizational culture and behavior.  Given that all the remaining boys are near Eagle, the former option seems the likely course of action.

In all likelihood, after over 20 years, the troop will soon fade away.

This is the nature of things. Organizations evolve, self-perpetuate, or they don’t. In some cases, this is good thing. In others, it is not. It can also be very painful for those directly affected, and mournful for those watching from a distance.

When a business closes down, I rarely blink. I have kind of a hard-line conservative streak in me that acknowledges that no business has a right to existence without success.

When a troop shuts down, or a service organization, or a college, the feelings are different. There is real sadness for the loss of the community and an empathy with the loss felt by its members. It’s sad, quite sad.

But the work goes on. We have to make sure those individuals served the troop continue to be served. We need to ensure  their records are maintained appropriately and they get credit for what they’ve done.

We also need to ensure that the service of troop is acknowledged and remembered.

I’m not really sure how I learned to ride a bike. I vaguely remember it. I do know that the red-head demon of sister a year younger than I learned before I did and that spurred me on to learning.  I know the maxim that once you learn to ride a bike you never forget. That seems to be true even with a brain tumor and the complete loss of my left side vestibular nerve and function.

For Christmas I bought bikes for the grandelves that came to live with us a year ago this month. Unfortunately, doing so meant that I would be the one to teach them to ride. As I had taught their father and their uncle.

I’m not sure how I survived the first two times as these boys are wearing me out. I also don’t know how one teaches someone to ride a bike, or to do anything that for that matter, that requires finding an inner balance. I use a lot of instruction, coercion, and fussing, followed by a lot of push, let go, and pray the boy remembers how best to fall.

It works. L1, the oldest at 12 learned first. I was kind of surprised by that since L2 (7) is the more physical of the two. But learn he did and has done pretty well.

L2 is almost there. Today he made several short trips, including some very fast downhills with non-injury dumps. He is very good at jumping off the bike. He was very verbal though, explaining that I “was putting him under too much pressure.”

Shut up and pedal, kid.

Pressure is getting email from a president with a cc to your boss, praising your work and pointing to it as validation of his efforts, and then saying to yourself, “I hope to God I got it right.”

One the very first day of bike lessons, I taught the boys how to fall. Sending them quickly downhill into the soft grass of the front yard. Learning to fall well and enjoy the experience, using similar techniques to Army jump school and hand-to-hand combat techniques, is fun all by itself.

When I teach people to code, I do much the same thing. I guide them to certain types of errors, such as infinite loops and try to teach the ways to fail gracefully.

I hope, that by the end of the weekend, the bike lessons are at an end and we can focus on just riding. The length of the High Bridge Trail awaits L1 and me this summer or fall. Followed by biking in to camp at False Cape State Park. His uncle was about 12 when he and I did it.

While I am not sure that I have all that much to say, I thought it was time again to set up a personal blog. I blog regularly over at http://research.schev.edu/apps/blogs.aspx about higher ed data and related news. However, since that is a platform of state government, I do tend to censor myself and to minimize editorial commentary.

While I may not express much more opinion here, I will at least feel comfortable in branching out a bit. 

Last night I blogged some data about vets using Post-911 GI Bill benefits. I want to continue that a bit here. The Washington Post has an excellent story about the struggles of returning veterans. There is though a statement that strikes a bit odd.

Many are thriving — they are attending college, paid in full by the post-9/11 G.I. Bill; they are finding employers who covet their leadership skills and work ethic; they are receiving the medical attention they need. 

There are so many embedded assumptions here, or references to data in the survey on which the the article is based, that are never discussed, that I am troubled.

The assumption that one is “thriving” simply because they are attending college without cost is problematic. Why? Because no one knows. Last Monday, the Student Veterans of America released their million record study report (in partnership with the Veteran Administration and the National Student Clearinghouse) and has charitable as that report was, it could only state that veterans attending college have graduation rates “almost” as high as the overall rates of students. (Which means non-veterans as a group have an even higher rate than the overall.) 

I don’t consider that thriving.

Further, we don’t know anything about the personal struggles of those veterans in college and whether or not they are doing well, let alone thriving. Nor do we know if all their expenses are being met. Nor do we know if they are receiving a good quality education. 

There is just so much we don’t know. However, there are some projects which may help with this, one of which is mine. It will probably be worth following on the other blog.