Mr UPS man, we still need to talk...

When you pull up into the front yard of a rural old home and a young, twenty something woman comes running at you dressed in a white T-shirt to the waist and two hands full of a Stainless Steel Mini-14 with a 30 round clip, it gets your attention. The UPS guy had good reason to be concerned. A week prior he had pulled up too close to the log cabin. He had taken the liberty to drive on my lawn right up to the front door. That's where Ohio, our trusted Shepard mix and protector, challenged him. She told him that he was too close, to back off, not to fuck with Carla or the girls. But the UPS guy maced my dog. And Carla, pregnant Carla, got maced too. She told me, and I wanted to fuck the guy up, of course. But time and talk intervened and all I did was to call his supervisor and tell him what happened. I also requested that he send the guy back again so I could break his nose and squirt mace up into his open and damaged sinus cavities. I know that would sting. There have been many times over the last 20 years when I wished for the opportunity to hold that guy to the ground with my knees and put stuff up his nose....you know, bathroom cleaners and things like that.

I'll Have What They're Having...

Although I savor and appreciate my independence, living off my SS and cutting back on bullshit that I never needed in the first place, certainly I could ramp it up. But for what? To sell more big silly homes on small silly lots? Middle America is programmed what to ask for and they are mostly good students. “We want granite counter tops, premium kitchen appliances., a two story foyer.etc, etc. God, please save me from mediocrity...I fled the North to get away from too many McMansions 10 feet from each other in what once were farmers’ fields complete with cow tenants. That's all gone but I still like the people, the interaction... but about the product? Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn...

Views from the Corner

People so want to believe. UFO'S, Bigfoot, ghosts, Nessie, all kinds of paranormal activity, more felt than seen out of the corner of our collective eye. Conspiracy theories are spawned by the same lust, something to allow us flights of fancy beyond our own matter-of-fact existence. The Kennedy assassination, a fake moon landing, 9-11. We seek it out of escapist need, like drugs and alcohol or a nice Pentecostal Church. Carry me away from here, get me high on the possibilities. When we run with a pack of the like-minded, we may never have to face the fact that the emperor has no clothes and Santa isn't real.

Florida Road Trip

Driving South on US1 yesterday, heading down to Bunnell for an appointment, we expected to see “Old Florida” along the way, but it had been erased. Up until recently, US1 was a crumbling secondary road, long neglected by folks in a rush to get to somewhere other than here. They're speeding up and down I95 now. 

In our hurry up culture there's little time to slow down for a look at a time eroded farmhouse with surrounding scrap piles that had once been outbuildings. Gone are the remnants of country stores, imploded and covered in a blanket of Kudzu. Even the alternate route 1 South had been updated. No rusted gas pumps dying slowly in front of abandoned stations plastered with tin urging travelers to chew Red Man tobacco. Now it's four lanes separated by a landscaped median and flanked by twin bike paths, all of it like a highway golf course, pristine and sterile, stretching out to the horizon. 

Heat snakes still danced up from the hot asphalt. That hadn't changed.

Bunnell itself has plenty of character though. It's liberally sprinkled with churches for the born again and bars for those who only see the light on Sunday. Pawn and gun shops compete for space with junkyards that call themselves auto body shops. 

Ruth called and told me of a dog she so wanted to rescue, the questionable product of a bitch impregnated by her son and the resulting bitch by her own brother. The pup had severe problems. Several locals managed to drag themselves past our front bumper when we stopped at the light in the center of town, themselves the seeming products of dark family relations. I told her that I understood her hesitancy to adopt.

When our appointment was over, we asked Siri to find some seafood, a good lunch spot. She sent us 20 miles due East where the Atlantic demands that traffic turn North or South. We wound up sitting in a booth at The Flagler Fish Company. Soothed by a Pandora station spinning familiar folk tunes, sharing a perfect Cesar Salad. Glasses of real sweet tea with lots of lemon were in a cold sweat, drenching napkins that now doubled as sponges on our pitted wood table. Asiago potatoes accompanied Lobster rolls stuffed with buttery chunks of warm flesh that only moments before had been the claws and tail of a dark green crustacean sleeping in a shaded corner of the lobster tank pressed up against a wall opposite our table. Although I find most restaurants disappointing, there are those rare times when the atmosphere combines with great service and food that is exactly right. This was one of those times. 

Sitting reflectively after we cleaned our plates, Carla covered my hand with hers, like a blanket from the chill. We shared a wordless smile, an appreciation for the moment, and for the good fortune of our lives themselves... as James Taylor sang a song about Mexico.

Home School Kids...

Even back when Ruth and Hannah first started to home school, there were many different curricula to choose from. But mostly Carla just took the kids everywhere, showed them everything, and let them ask 1,000 questions. She would take them to various businesses and ask the owner to show them what he does, and how. People generally loved to help. Carla had the kids handle the money in a check-out line and know what the change should be. She mentored them. But there was almost never a time when she said: “OK, it's 3PM, time to study math” no such structure. Yes, the state did monitor and test periodically. No, they didn't “have to” take the GED, but both aced it on their own. In fact, Ruth tested in the top 1% in the entire country for language skills. Partially, that is due to the fact that when Carla first raised the idea of homeschooling to me, my only issue was that they become good readers and writers. I figured from there they had the tools to do anything they choose to do. We intentionally had no TV when they were growing up other than a VCR to watch tapes from the library, so they read to entertain themselves and got very creative with arts & crafts for the same reason. Carla spent many hours in the early years nestled in a booth with the girls at “Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor” sharing book reading duties, and on the floor of the local “Goodwill Store” reading through books there as well. Most people were delighted to have a young mother and her two little girls engaged in those activities in their store, even when it was on the floor in a corner of the room. As far as socialization goes, there was plenty of that for the girls as they grew. Local home school groups organized various activities and there were many clubs and opportunities aside from simply spending time with friends. Living in the country, we were big on visiting family farms, going to dairy farms to collect eggs from the hen house...many activities more enjoyable than the enforced boredom of a study hall...

For me personally, I got the best education from my parents, both well educated, articulate people. So I believed the kids mostly did the same with us. Are there gaps? Sure. Ruth jokingly claims that she doesn't know how to read an analog clock. But then, I've never used the Latin or trigonometry I learned and would have been better off learning people skills, how to be a good husband and father, or how to build a raised garden. Of course, that's where reading comes in...

The whole world seems to be very locked in to the idea of the necessity of a “formal education” and I found that to mean an inordinate amount of “sit down and shut up” time...in public schools that are more about crowd control than learning, much like minimum security prisons.

I believe the very best rational for home schooling is the absence of peer pressure. The kids never felt the need to wear certain clothes, behave in a certain way, nor share the attitudes or assumptions of a peer group. That was huge. They both had the chance to figure out who they were, what they stood for in this world, before the winds of social conformity tried to blow them in one direction or another. By the time those winds finally had a chance to try to blow them around, both girls were already very self-confident individuals, well anchored, secure in their own paths. The determined winds of conformity never had a chance...