What I Hate M-O

It has been suggested I might follow this rancorous list with a more polite compilation of things I love. I don't know. That might be harder. There are certainly many things I love but to accidentally omit just one could be costly. I mean, I forgot to include Hitler in my current list but no one decided to give me the cold shoulder or stop talking to me all together.

M - Mustache. This is best referred to as the "porn-stache" because it can make any respectable guy look as though he has been transported to the world of 1970's adult entertainment. I find mustaches to be distracting, at best. Of course, there's many kinds. There's the bushy 'stache (Einstein, Sonny Bono, Tom Selleck, John Oates, Dr. Phil), Fu-Manchu (Hulk Hogan), Overgrown (David Crosby, Gene Shalit, Frank Zappa), Overly manicured (Freddie Mercury), Flamboyant (Geraldo Rivera, Vincent Price, Salvador Dali), Small (Charlie Chaplan, Hitler), Thin-Lined (John Waters, Clark Gable), Bushy Sideburn/Mustache Combo (Richard Roundtree),  Handlebar (Rolly Fingers), and fake (Groucho Marx). Few men have successfully pulled off the mustache: Clint Eastwood, Richard Prior, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Yosemite Sam, to name a few.

Others: maggots, malted milk balls, mannequins, manure, messiness, mink coats, mosquitoes, murder, and Michael Bolton

N - N-SYNC, NWA, Naughty by Nature, Nick Lachey, and the Notorious BIG. This is a hateful tribute to most, if not all, boy bands and gangster rap groups. While I generally feel as though I like all kinds of music (although to differing degrees) I doubt I'll ever come around to either of these genres.

Others: nausea and neck tattoos

O- Ostentatiousness. For a period of time my dad would come home from work each week with a new word he and a friend had looked up in the dictionary. Their goal each week was to use this word a predetermined number of times each day until it became part of their vocabulary. I think, too, they hoped to annoy those around them. The only two words I remember are "ostentatious" and "facetious." It's been at least twenty-five years but I still use both words from time to time. The definition of ostentatious is "pretentious or conspicuous show in an attempt to impress others." I wonder if my dad found this to be ironic?

Others: opossums and the Oakridge Boys

The Speed Trap

We spent yesterday driving from South Carolina to St. Louis. As always we woke early, climbed into the van, and were on our way a few hours before the sun would rise. 4 am.

As everyone settled in and fell back asleep I stared off into the blackness ahead. There's little to see when driving down unlit roads in the dead of night. The only thing to break the silence is the rhythmic hum of the tires on the road.

Not too long after finding the interstate and passing into North Carolina the tranquility of the night was broken by the blinding blur of flashing blue lights behind me. Perhaps I became too lost in my daydreams. The trooper told me I was doing 85 mph in a 60 mph zone. I thought 60 mph was a ridiculous speed limit for any stretch of interstate. I thought I had the cruise control set to 75. I thought I probably wasn't going to get by with a warning. I was right. 

He asked "Why'd you just zoom right past me? Didn't you see that I was a state trooper?" This, I thought, was a rather stupid question so I chose not to answer it. I also chose not to debate his accusation that I was driving 85 since my only defense was that I thought I was doing 75.


This ticket is crazy-expensive. A sever punishment, for certain. However, it hasn't so much taught me not to speed as much as it's taught me not to speed in total darkness.

Later, Tricia took over the driving. She looked over and asked "How fast do you think it's safe to go without getting pulled over?"

"We're good," I said. "We already have a ticket. I think it kind of serves as a voucher against future tickets within the same trip. Kind of like 'I'm sorry but we already gave at the office.'" 


Poor logic, perhaps, but we made it the rest of the way without incident.

What I Hate: J - L

J - Jersey Shore. In all fairness I've never actually seen Jersey Shore. However, I've never seen a concentration camp either but I'm pretty sure they're both awful. One of the people on the show is named Snooki. Really. I'm not clever to make something like that up. I've been told there's an episode of Beavis and Butthead in which the boys try to create a chart tracking which of the Jersey Shore characters have hooked-up with one another. Beavis studies all the intersecting lines and deadpans "I bet if you stared at the chart long enough you could find out where gonorrhea came from."

Others: Ju-Ju Fruits, Jerome Bettis, jelly, jealousy, jingoism, jigsaw puzzles, Jack Daniels, Jumping Jack Flash (the movie, not the song), Journey, and James Joyce.



K -Kate (and Ashley) Olsen. They're both bazillionaires and celebrities but I'm not all that certain how either of these came to be.

Others: KKK, Kip Winger, KIT, and Kevin Costner.



L - Late night commercials. It's not just that they're really bad that makes me hate these commercials. No, it's that they're selling products and services that are designed to appeal to forty-five year old men living in their mother's basement. Knowing that they strategically place these commercials to reach their target audience, I hate realizing it might be me!

Others: landmines, laser shows, laundromats, leeches, limousines, line dancing, litterbugs, locusts, losing, and loud neighbors

What I Hate: G - I

Hate is a strong word. I mean, do I hate Gary Busey or am I just wildly disturbed by him? It's a fine line I'm walking here.

Here's the next installment:

G - Great Expectations. I've tried to read this book, by Charles Dickens, three different times in my life. The first was in high school. I admit I probably didn't give it much of an effort but, still, it made no sense what-so-ever. I wasn't even all that certain they were speaking English. I gave up  after a few chapters and then paid just enough attention to the class lectures to squeak out my usual "C." A few years later I tried reading it again because I didn't want to admit failure. I abandoned it after less than a hundred pages. The last time I tried was in my early thirties. I somehow convinced myself that another ten years of life experience would help me enjoy this book. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was still awful and made me feel like a bad reader. Anyone who says they love this book is lying or trying to appear smarter than they really are. I, on the other hand, vow to never try reading it again.

Others: guilt, guns, grapefruit, grenades, Gatlinburg, TN,  Gucci (and all it represents)


H- Hard Liquor. Why does anyone ever drink this stuff? It essentially tastes like fingernail polish smells.If, to consume it, you have to shoot it down your throat as fast as humanly possible and then squeeze your face up tighter than a bull's ass on fight night then it's just not worth it. But at least it's cheap, right?

Others: haircuts, hearses, hockey, hospitals, hot air balloon rides, horseradish, hoola-hoops (only because every one I ever tried didn't work right), and humidity


I - IRS. This might seem too obvious but I have a particular beef with the IRS. It is now early December and we still have not received our sizeable tax refund from last April. Every few months we get a letter saying "We apologize but we are still reviewing your file. You will hear back from us on (insert random date) with our findings." Only guess what? We don't hear back from them until about three weeks after that date and the only thing we receive, even then, is yet another letter saying they haven't had enough time to look over our return. And because they have a sick sense of humor that even I cannot appreciate, yesterday they sent us a bulky envelope (never a good sign) that said they're charging us a 20% interest penalty for the fact that our tax situation was not resolved by April 15th. Yes, 20% in penalties for money they actually OWE US. I enjoyed an hour long discussion with them on the phone last night. The guy on the other end actually started laughing at one point, stopped, and said "I'm sorry, this probably isn't a laughing matter." At this point maybe that's all you can do. This week we will send in yet more adoption documents to them and wait another three months.

Others: identity theft, idiots (as well as ignoramuses and imbeciles), and igloos (I'm really supposed to believe those things keep you warm?),

I'M DONE!!!

“What does it mean to be a winner at learning? Winners are judged by some external criteria set by anyone other than the learner. If you answer more of someone else’s questions, score higher on someone else’s test, or complete more of someone else’s assignments according to their specifications, then you will be considered a learning winner over your peers. Under these circumstances, the goal of such schooling is to do more of someone else’s bidding. This separates learners from their learning because they control neither its content nor its consequences. In classrooms that feature learning competitions, learning is about winning – about gains, prestige, and satisfaction. It has more to do with ego involvement than with performance, coming to know yourself, your own and other cultures, and the workings of the world” 

I love this excerpt from Patrick Shannon's book Text, Lies, and Videotape. It was one of many I've read (or at least browsed) over the past month in preparation for a theory paper I was writing for one of my classes.  This paper took far longer than I expected .

However,  I'm proud to say that after holing up in the library on Wednesday I was able to finally finish the paper, as well as a research proposal and accompanying Power Point presentation. By the time I entered that final reference and hit "save" I was almost in disbelief that I could actually be done with everything. It's been a long, but rewarding, haul.

After attending my final classes on Monday and Tuesday I'll have five weeks off before classes start up again. As overwhelmed as I get at times trying to keep up with my coursework I have to say that I do enjoy it. I like having lots to do. When I don't I feel kind of lost, not knowing exactly what I should be doing. I imagine I'll probably play more guitar, clear out some fallen trees and limbs around the house, and go for bike rides with the kids. It's not such a bad job trying to find ways to spend downtime!

While I won't share my paper on critical literacy I will pass along three or four of my favorite quotes (as pulled from the writing of some seriously smart people). 

 *****

"If the mass media are showing kids how to resolve their conflicts through violence or unfettered consumerism, we have to encourage them to reflect. We have a responsibility to help them question their ideas and values, to figure out where these ideas come from and whose interests they serve."


“What knowledge is most worthy? and its corollary, What should we teach our children? are deceptively simple questions….In recent years, the question of what knowledge is most worthy has emerged as part of the contemporary debate on education and schooling. It is related to the larger questions of who and what is an American? Contemporary conservative critics…believe they have the answer. America is what its most successful and powerful people have been- their literature, history, personal stories, and traditions” 

“Education is suffering from narration sickness. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable…His task is to ‘fill’ the students with the contents of his narration – contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity”

What I Hate: D - F

So I learned from last week's post that Dan Akroyd has a few fans left. I can only guess they're easily amused  by the likes of Christmas with the Kranks, Earth vs the Spider, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Even in his heyday he was making gems like The Great Outdoors,  My Stepmother is an Alien, and Trading Places (which was good despite him). If you ever see that Dan Akroyd is a new movie you can pretty much guess he's going to play a pompous jerk. Again.

This week I'm going to tackle the letters D - F. I'll steer clear of old SNL favorites (although I now regret not putting Jane Curtain in with the C's because I don't think she's funny either).

D - DENTAL HYGIENISTS.  It's not the dentist I dislike as much as the hygienist. From the bitewing x-ray to the scraping, it's really off-putting. Worse yet, the hygienist feels the need to make small talk while your mouth is full of latex fingers and a spit tube. I don't know how much they make to stare into people's mouths all day but it can't possibly be enough.

Others: dampness, diarrhea, diamonds, dust, Def Leppard, discount cards, and Dr. Who


E -ENGLISH MOVIES WITHOUT SUBTITLES. How is it they speak English in England yet I can't understand half of what they say? A number of years back Tricia and I rented the Robert Altman movie Gosford Park and had to turn it off after about fifteen minutes because we had no clue what anyone was saying.

Others: evangelicalism, Elvis Costello, eels, electric razors, emus, and the tailcoat-riding E-Street Band


F -FACEBOOK. "You can find me on Facebook." This is what I find myself hearing more and more. From the Farms to Schools program I found in an exhibit hall at the SC State Fair to the guy selling homemade cutting boards at the All :Local Farmer's Market on Whaley Street, more and more people are using Facebook as a means to communicate and even do business. I frown when I hear this. I don't have a Facebook account. A few years ago I tried it for a month or so but I kept getting friend requests and messages from people I don't remember being friends with in high school. The only thing I liked about Facebook was the silly quizzes you could take. That is, until I took one to find out which character I would be on the TV show Lost. I really wanted to be the smart-mouthed Sawyer but was told, instead, I was most like Hurley, the vanilla sidekick. Screw Facebook!

Others: funeral homes, false praise, flu, false teeth floating in a cup, ferris wheels, fist fighting, flies, frigid temperatures, fringe, Ferris Bueller's sister, and Friday the 13th Part VIII

What I Hate from A to Z

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast recently published a book detailing the things in life she hates, or at the very least make her uncomfortable. Hearing this I thought...Gee, I could do that. I hate things too! Not a whole lot of things. But surely at least one thing for every letter of the alphabet. Right? Well, I thought I might find out. So here goes my list...


A - ABBA. This one almost seems too easy. Bjorn Ulvaeus, before forming ABBA, played in a group called the Hootenanny Singers. Benny Andersson played keyboards in a band called the Hep Stars. During a time when the US music scene was exploring sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll Sweden was falling in love with groups called the Hootenanny Singers and the Hep Stars. What a bunch of squares! I'm tempted to put Sweden on my list.

Other contenders: abacuses, abstract art, accordions, airports, allergies, alpacas, ammunition, armpits, and the entire American Pie movie franchise.


B - BALLET. I once worked in a district where every third grade classroom had to attend a performance of The Nutcracker as performed by a local ballet company. It was terrible. It was slow, made no sense, and really long. The kid next to me fell asleep less than half way through. I was tempted to do the same but felt that, as the teacher, it would be inappropriate.

Other contenders: baboons, barbed wire, barking, Bassett Hounds, baths, billboards, baby blue, and the Boston Red Sox.


C - CANADA. First, it's really cold in Canada. I once heard a comedian complain about all the Canadians who visit California and say "I really love it here but I could never stay because I love the seasons too much." His response? "Yeah, I love the seasons too. That's why I live somewhere that skips all the shitty ones!" More reasons to hate Canada? Dan Aykroyd, Justin Bieber, Tom Greene, Corey Haim, Norm MacDonald, Alan Thicke, and William Shatner.

Other contenders: Conway Twitty,cancer, croutons, camels, cellulite, Chevelles, camouflage, cannibalism, and Celtic dance.


...to be continued.

Driveway Moments

NPR introduces you to all kinds of stories, books, people, movies, and musicians you'd probably never hear about otherwise. I don't really listen all that often anymore. It's too risky when the kids are in the van because every once in a while they'll drop a story in there that isn't really fit for young ears. And when driving alone, a true rarity, I find that, more than not, I prefer the sound of silence. Between teaching and home there aren't all that many quiet moments to be found. My drive to and from USC on Monday and Tuesday nights are pretty much it. These two drives account for the two hours each week when I don't have to solve a problem, move children from one place to the next, answer a question, or correct a behavior. It's not that I mind any of these things - I don't - but it is refreshing to enjoy a moment of absolute silence and not worry about whether or not I should be making plans, reading assigned texts, writing newsletters, researching articles, writing papers, or assessing student work.

That's not to say I never turn on the radio anymore. In fact, while I avoid auditory stimulus on the way to class I actually look forward to it on the way home. That's because I know when I get into the car around 7:20 Terry Gross will be on. Fresh Air is my favorite of all the NPR programs. Terry Gross is far from being a great interviewer - in fact, she can be quite awkward at times. Still, she brings in people I rarely, if ever, hear about anywhere else and I somehow find myself becoming completely engrossed in their story.

This past week she interviewed Tom Waits about his new CD, Bad as Me. I'm no Tom Waits fan. I can't even begin to imagine how others can stomach his gravelly voice. As I got into the car Terry was introducing a track in which Waits uses a falsetto voice. I'm not sure if this was better or worse than his natural  growling. Yet I still listened the whole way home.

The week before, I listened to an interview with Tom Irwin who found a diary written in 1893 hidden away in his Pleasant Plains, Illinois farmhouse and set the words he found inside it to music. He created an entire album of these songs (hear it here). It was an odd story but, again, I didn't want it to end. It was fascinating.

About a month ago I learned of chef Grant Achatz who charges diners at his Chicago restaurant, Alinea, more than $200 to enjoy an ambitious 23-course meal. Achatz is one of the "leading members of the molecular gastronomy movement, which uses unexpected flavor combinations and exotic laboratory tools to create foods based on the molecular compatibility of ingredients." He has a machine that can capture the aroma of an item. He places this gas into a bag, pricks tiny holes in it, slides it into a pillowcase, and puts it under the plate just before it is sent out into the dining room. The weight of the plate pushes down onto the bag, slowly forcing out the aromatic gas. It's the combination of this aroma (say, leather or grass) and the food that helps to elicit memories and feelings in the diner never before imagined in a dining experience. The hook on this piece was the fact that Chef Achatz has lost his ability to taste after being diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer. How ironic.

These are the types of stories that make you sit in the car for an extra minute or two after you pull into the garage. They're far more interesting than an interview with Russel Crowe, Barack O'bama, or Paul McCartney. They're even worth giving up those coveted moments of silence.

Blinded by Science

There was a time I didn't enjoy teaching science. My first few years in the classroom I didn't know what to teach. It's hard to imagine now but at the time I didn't even know what state standards or standardized testing was. For better or worse we were allowed to teach from our interests. In my classroom this meant we did some really cool things with astronomy but once that topic of exploration was exhausted we were left with a few random studies or experiments to fill out the year.

Part of the problem was probably the fact my own experiences with science in the classroom were sub par, at best. While I don't remember a single moment of science instruction in elementary school, I vividly recall six years of middle and high school classes that called for the memorization of terminology, cell parts, and the periodic table of  elements. My only positive memories are of dissecting a frog in biology and then later using a strobe light to measure the distance between ripples in a tray of water in physics. That's not a lot.

By the time I entered my science methods course as an undergraduate student in the elementary education department I had all but given up on science. Nothing about it held any interest for me. The course surprised me. It was fun. However, I didn't think this was entirely fair because all we did in the class was play with science tools, develop and conduct experiments, and pull apart little foil balls to discover a mouse skeleton inside (we later found these came from owls). All this playing around didn't really seem like teaching. Certainly not the teaching I was accustomed to.

My final course before graduating from college was an earth science class. It would generally have been the type of class you'd take first. Not surprisingly, I had put it off until the bitter end. To save money I took it at the local community college and really didn't expect much. Early on that's about all I got - no much.

However, a few weeks in we began to learn about space. I became really fascinated not just with everything to be found outside the earth's atmosphere but with the incredible predictability of it all. Equipped with a few charts and a little math you could accurately predict where the moon would be and what it would look like next Tuesday at 10:10 pm. You could figure out what time of day Mars would come into view and which constellation it would be hiding in. It wasn't something you just memorized but something you could go out and actually do yourself. Before long I bought my own telescope, sky chart, and red flashlight. After graduating I continued to read books on both physics and astronomy and even went back to college to take a few advanced math courses.

And despite this I still walked into my first day of teaching feeling the science blues. This continued after moving to South Carolina. Here in the Palmetto state I was introduced to strict state standards that told me exactly what I should be teaching and sometimes even when I should be teaching them. This would have been a relief except for the fact that half of what I was charged with teaching was topics I knew little to nothing about: states of matter, rocks and minerals, the physics of sound. Fortunately my new school had a science lab equipped with an assistant who would pull together materials for me and even help teach the lessons. There were a lot of experiments. They came from a popular science program and weren't really all that bad. The kids were getting to use all kinds of tools, record data, and make connections. I slowly began to learn that science in a classroom doesn't have to be boring at all.

I've since moved to a school that is about as science-oriented as any school could possibly be. In the place of the old programs are lots of time spent exploring, playing, asking, reading, and experimenting. I've had the incredible fortune to teach next door to my buddy Tim who has taught me that teaching science isn't as much about memorizing or conducting a series of set experiments as it is about living in wonder of the world. I've learned to be amazed by a caterpillar building its chrysalis, curious about grass seed growing in pencil shavings, and inspired by the many artifacts and creatures brought in each day by seven and eight year olds who have learned already how cool science really is. More than anything, I learned that to be a good science teacher you just have to spark an interest and get out of the way.

I've been thinking about all this over the past few weeks. The kids have been observing animals, studying seeds, designing and conducting experiments, inquiring into fruits and vegetables, learning about nutrition, and mucking through non-fiction books in search of really cool facts to delight their friends with. Their excitement and curiosity has no limits. What was once a disappointment has turned into a highlight of the day. Here's a few pics from our studies...

An opportunity to observe flamingos in an unnatural setting - the zoo.

Setting up an experiment with seeds from home.

These apples came from New Zealand. We actually grow apples in SC.

Thousands of heads of lettuce grown in downtown Columbia.

These microgreens are grown completely chemical free.

Feeding the fish in our pond.

A visit from the executive chef of Richland 2 schools.

We found out our school lunches are INCREDIBLY healthy.

The chef told us you can plant the top of a pineapple and it will grow. We're making sure.

I'll end this post with a big thank you to Tim for helping me to see how much fun science is. If that thing takes off we'll send the first pineapple your way!

Reading the Signs

There were a number of things I didn't particularly care for when we lived in Lake Carolina. Cookie-cutter houses, neighborhood gossip, and community by-laws, to name a few. But perhaps my biggest beef was with the silly street names.

There were street names designed to make you believe you were living near the beach:

Harborside Lane...Nautique Circle...Shoreline Drive...Mariner's Cove Drive...Windjammer Lane...Sailing Club Drive...Penninsula Way...Marsh Pointe Drive (I particularly love the use of a  fancy silent-e).

There were other street names designed to make you think this was some sort of elite community:

Ashton Hill Drive...Laurel Bluff Court...Avington Lane...Wescott Place...Austree Drive...Granbury Lane

I think you could throw the words Way, Court, Place, or Lane on just about anything and make it sound uppity.

"After you pass through the security gate you'll want to make a right turn on Weepy Colon Court and then an immediate left on Dingleberry Lane. It's a cobblestone. You'll probably see our Porsche parked out front."

When we were in Lake Carolina we lived on Berkeley Ridge Drive. The fact that we were neither on a ridge or anywhere near California obviously escaped the developers. However, as pompous as the street name was what bothered me even more was having to constantly spell Berkeley for everyone. Two e's, not one.

I guess you at least have to give credit to the developers in Lake Carolina for using a bit of imagination. My sister-in-law lives in a St. Louis neighborhood that consists of streets named Clear Meadows, Cool Meadows, Dear Meadows, High Meadows, Lea Meadows, and Shady Meadows. And as you can probably guess...there's no meadow to be found anywhere near this collection of single-story ranches.

Our new address is on Stone Ridge Court. A bit pretentious sounding, perhaps, but at least there are thousands of stones and it's actually located on a ridge. If not modest, it's at least accurate.

On my way to the recycle center yesterday I found myself paying close attention to the names of the streets I passed along the way. They weren't suburb names. No, they sounded like names you'd expect to find in the country...

Broom Mill
Cowhorn
Winesap
Peach
Hungry Hollow
Gum Springs
Roddy
Old Ruff

These are names with character - and probably a story.

But of all the roads I passed, my favorite by far was a gravel road winding away from US 331 into a stand of trees. It's name?

Devil's Racetrack

Now, how cool would it be to have that printed on your driver's license?

Waste Not...

Our new house does not have trash pick-up service. Given that our driveway is a two hundred foot gravel incline to the street above I'm not really that disappointed. I can't even imagine hauling a can or two up there each week. Instead, we load our trash and recyclables into the van and take it seven miles down the road to the trash and recycling center.

The trash and recycling center is about the coolest place on earth if you really love organization - and I do. There are different bays for house waste, yard waste, and appliances. There are also recycling bays for cardboard and paper, plastics and glass, batteries, electronics, tires, steel, and more. I couldn't wait to get home and tell Tricia all about it after my first trip. I guess I'm easily amused.

Hauling your own trash really helps you to be more aware of the amount of waste you create in a week. Because it took us a week or two to figure out how and where to get rid of our trash our first haul was a pretty big one. We had to put all the seats in the van down and cram everything in.

My last trip to the center was last Sunday. A few days ago, maybe Thursday, I was walking around the side of the house and opened up one of the trash cans to drop in a scrap of trash I found lying in the woods. When I lifted the lid I noticed there weren't any bags of trash inside. Confused, I opened up the other trash can and found it, too, had no bags. I went inside and checked the kitchen trash can. It was mostly full but still had a bit of room left. Wow, in five or so days we hadn't filled even a single bag yet. I was amazed. Knowing this changed my trashy habits. I began avoiding making trash and crushing what I did make down to the size of nothingness.

Finally on Saturday the kitchen trash was on the verge of overflowing and had to be taken out. We almost made it a whole week. Almost. Though it wasn't on purpose I was proud to see we were somehow minimizing our waste. I say it wasn't on purpose but we do try to avoid things that are heavily packaged and single serving items. Last week I was on a trip where more than two hundred Capri Suns were handed out to a group of kids. Now that's wasteful.

A great way to avoid creating waste is to fix broken things rather than buying new ones. Or fighting the temptation to have the newest version of something that works perfectly. Or finding a new home for unwanted things. There's actually a website for giving your old stuff away. It's called Freecycle and can be found at www.freecycle.org.

We joined Freecycle for the first time in St. Louis. We used it to get rid of our treadmill after we realized how miserable it is to walk inside. After listing it on the site we had about eight or nine interested parties contact us within a few hours. We chose one randomly and it was picked up from our driveway the following Saturday.

A few weeks after getting rid of the treadmill our new dog jumped on our new mattress and made a new deposit right in the center of the pillow top. She completely saturated it. Thinking the mattress was a lost cause I jumped on Freecycle and placed a "Wanted" ad for a queen sized mattress. Someone replied and a few days later my buddy Tim and I drove to their house to pick it up. Standing at their front door we looked down behind the bushes and saw a whole army of cigarette butts. It might be reasonable to believe these people only smoked out on the front porch and that the mattress wouldn't smell like cigarette smoke but I wasn't about to find out. We high-tailed out of there before anyone could answer the door.

Though we are members, we haven't had the chance to use Freecycle here in Columbia just yet. We generally call the Salvation Army to pick up any large items we're getting rid of and the smaller stuff is delivered to Goodwill. Still, I love the idea of Freecycle and look at their listings from time to time. Looking at it tonight I saw the following items offered or requested: wedding stuff, a dog who barks loudly but listens a little, serving dishes, a lawnmower, and a kitten. But by far my favorite was this...

Wanted: Sandpaper
I need a piece of sandpaper to sand out some scratches on my dining room baseboard. Maybe someone has an extra square or two from a small job they just completed? I'd be able to pick it up tomorrow, if convenient.

Ha. While I love the idea of sharing resources and all, I'm not sure a single square of sandpaper warrants a drive across town. Is it just me or is this a bit fanatical? There's always a crazy to make the rest of us look bad.

At the Movies

When a delusional loner buys a life-size sex doll over the Internet, promptly falls in love with her and starts telling people that the doll is his girlfriend, his brother and sister-in-law decide it's time to intervene. Patricia Clarkson co-stars in this offbeat feature film debut about love, loss and human relationships from director Craig Gillespie.

This is the description provided on the Netflix DVD slip for the latest movie to arrive in our mailbox. It's called Lars and the Real Girl and is surprisingly rated PG-13. We haven't seen it yet but I'm excited to. I remember having seen commercials for it at the movie theater a number of years ago.

When we lived in St. Louis there were a handful of great theaters that showed independent films like this one each week. Refusing the bigger ticket titles such as Sex and the City or Armageddon,  the Tivoli, Chase, and Plaza Frontenac theaters chose to show small budget films that were, more often than not, a lot of fun.

It would be easy to become disheartened by the fact Columbia doesn't offer many opportunities to see movies like Limbo or The Lost Boys of Sudan. But we're not. Because of all the great inventions of the past 100 years perhaps none are quite as life changing as Netflix. Any movie delivered straight to your house. Keep it as long as you want and send it back in when you finish. They'll send another! Who goes to a video store anymore?

A few years ago an old friend extended an on-line request that we set our i-Pods to shuffle and then list the first ten songs to appear. My ten songs included, among others, Simon and Garfunkle, Elliott Smith, The Beatles, and Radiohead. I enjoyed reading everyone else's playlists. I think it'd be cool to see these lists from a whole variety of people I know now. Would I be surprised?

In the same vein, and thinking about movies, I thought I'd share ten movies from our queue. I don't think the music we listen to or the movies we watch define us all that much but it's still interesting to see our choices in list form. Here they are...

***
100 Years of Horror: Disc 1

Christopher Lee hosts this chilling anthology of clips with commentary from stars such as Robert De Niro and Charlton Heston, assessing some of the most memorable -- and horrific -- scenes in cinema history. This collection rounds up more than 10,000 monstrous moments featuring scream queens, maniacs, demons, sorcerers, witchcraft, the walking dead, Frankenstein and many more.

***
 Waiting for Superman

Dynamic documentarian Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) weaves together the stories of students, families, educators and reformers to shed light on the failing public school system and its consequences on the future of the United States. In this Sundance Audience Award winner for Best Documentary, Guggenheim deftly examines the options to improve public education and provide America's teachers and students with the help they need.

***
Bill Cosby: Hiimself

Bill Cosby, television's favorite avuncular funnyman and one of the longtime masters of stand-up comedy, treats his fans to this funny, satirical and heartwarming live concert from Canada. Riffing on such varied subjects as the trial by fire of marriage, parenthood and the side-splitting antics of toddlers, and even a hilarious encounter at a dentist's office, Cosby will tickle your funny bone until you hurt from laughing!

***
King Corn
In Aaron Woolf's thought-provoking documentary, friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis move back to America's Corn Belt to plant an acre of the nation's most-grown and most-subsidized grain and follow their crop into the U.S. food supply. What they learn about genetically modified seeds, powerful herbicides and the realities of modern farming calls into question government subsidies, the fast-food lifestyle and the quality of what we eat.

***
God Grew Tired of Us
After raising themselves in the desert along with thousands of other "lost boys," Sudanese refugees John, Daniel and Panther have found their way to America, where they experience electricity, running water and supermarkets for the first time. Capturing their wonder at things Westerners take for granted, this documentary, an award winner at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, paints an intimate portrait of strangers in a strange land.

***
The Fighter
After a string of defeats, Mickey Ward rediscovers his fighting will with help from trainer and half-brother Dicky, a once-talented pugilist and small-town hero now battling drug addiction. 

***
Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog
When he's not busy breaking the law or trying to get close to his secret crush, Penny, supervillain wannabe Dr. Horrible boasts about his exploits via his Internet video blog and dreams of defeating his nemesis, Captain Hammer. Conceived during the 2008 Hollywood writers' strike, Joss Whedon's quirky musical comedy originally debuted as an online miniseries.

***
National Geographic: Return to Everest/Surviving Everest
National Geographic offers an insider's look at the history of Mount Everest -- the highest peak on Earth -- and the remarkable athletes who dare to scale it. Climbers Peter Hillary, Jamling Norgay and Brent Bishop battle the extremes 50 years after their fathers made successful treks to the top in this one-hour documentary, which includes interviews with Sir Edmund Hillary and others who have answered the mountain's call. 

***
The Most Dangerous Man in America
Revisit a pivotal point in American history in this documentary that chronicles Pentagon insider Daniel Ellsberg's daring endeavor to leak top-secret government papers that disclosed shocking truths about the Vietnam War and Nixon's presidency. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith direct this absorbing, Oscar-nominated account that features compelling interviews with Ellsberg, retired New York Times editor Max Frankel and other key figures.

***
The New Recruits
Tag along with brash business students Suraj, Heidi and Joel as they attempt to help poor communities in Kenya, India and Pakistan through a social entrepreneurship initiative that focuses on saving the world through capitalism instead of charity. Narrated by actor Rainn Wilson, this unflinching documentary reveals what happens when jet-setting idealists attempt to force underprivileged people to pay for essential goods and services.

Out of My League

I've been finding life to be a bit busy of late. This is due, in large part, to the new degree program I started this semester at USC. I decided to try taking two courses at the same time. When I was working on my masters degree I never took more than one class in a semester. Classes require a weekly drive downtown after a full day of teaching, getting home just as the kids are climbing into bed, and a good deal of reading, researching, and writing on the weekends. One class is very doabe. Two, I'm finding, is quite a lot.

I don't mind too much, though. I love the readings and often enjoy the discussions that take place afterward . Even the assignments aren't so bad. The professors work hard to avoid assigning busy work and I always feel proud when putting the final touches on a paper.

The classes I'm taking look, so far, to be more challenging than the ones I took in the masters program. There's a whole lot more reading each week and the language in the texts is more multi-syllabic than I'm used to. I have to read very slowly at times and often I go back to reread sections because I haven't a clue what I just read.

I've found I can't read any of the books from my qualitative research course before going to bed. Not that I don't enjoy them but once the clock reaches 10:00 I can't make it more than a page or two without falling asleep. The words start floating around the page and nothing makes sense. On weekend mornings I wake up, reach down for these same books, and try to get ten or fifteen pages read before starting the day. Suddenly it all makes sense again.

I'm relieved by this because my first day of class had me wondering if maybe I wasn't fit for this program.

Class started on a Monday at 4:30. This is less than ideal because we have faculty meetings at school on Monday afternoons and I have to duck out after only ten or fifteen minutes to make it to class on time. I left even earlier for the first class because I needed to stop by the bookstore to pick up my texts. I had ordered them online earlier in the day and when I walked into the bookstore I knew I was in trouble. The line for textbooks was about forty deep.

I asked the girl in front of me for the time and she told me it was 4:10. Ugh, I was either going to be late or have to drive back down later in the week to try the line again. I opted to wait it out and get the books. After twenty-five minutes of inching toward the help desk I found out they didn't have my books ready.

"Sometimes we don't have the books in stock," the kid behind the kiosk explained.

"How can you not have them in stock?" I asked. "This is the university bookstore and the professors tell you which books to order."

"Sorry," he said. "You'll have to come back in a couple of days."

Dejected I walked to class. The class was in Wardlaw College, just across the street from the Horseshoe. I've had a number of other classes in this building yet still get lost every time I'm in there. This time was no different. I pulled a scrap of paper out of my pocket to find the room number. 2740, it read. I walked around looking at signs and door numbers and couldn't figure out if I was getting closer or further away. A professor came walking around the corner and spotted me for the deer in the headlights that I was.

"Do you need help?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I can't find this room. It's number 2740."

She looked at me with a puzzled look.

"Are you sure it's 2740?" she asked. "There aren't any numbers that high on this floor."

As she looked at my slip of paper another professor ducked her head out into the hall.

"It's 274-O," she said. "The letter O, not zero."

One of them walked me to my class and wished me luck. It was like being five all over again.

When I walked into the classroom it looked as though every seat was filled. Everyone was turned to another person talking with great focus. A few people were even jotting some things down. As many of them turned to look at me, I walked up the center aisle looking for a seat. I was regretting my decision to stay in line at the bookstore.

I found a seat at a table in the second row. As I sat down two women looked over at me and said hello.

"Hey," I returned.

One's name was Selina and the other I didn't catch. It was something really long that I had never heard before. They asked me a few questions and I made small talk about the bookstore, teaching, and my family. I assumed we were just spending a few moments getting to know one another while the professor prepared something. I didn't take this time seriously at all.

"Okay," the professor said, walking to the front of the room. "Now we'll go around and you can introduce your new classmates to the rest of us. Tell us their name, their program, where they are in their coursework, and other interesting things that we might all like to know about them."

Oh shit!

Some people like to joke that I'm not a good listener. As much as I hate to admit it I think they're probably right. At this very moment I KNEW they were right. I looked over at Selina's notebook and saw that she had written notes about the other lady and about me as well. I looked down in front of me and saw nothing. No notes. Nothing.

The first few people to share provided nothing short of a full biography of their partner. My heart sank. I didn't have the books I needed for class, I walked in really late, and now I wasn't going to be able to complete the first minor task set before me. Faced with failure I did what anyone would do.

I cheated.

I began looking over at the notebook of the woman whose name I couldn't remember and copying down the things she had written about Selina. I was only able to get a few things down before Selina raised her hand and volunteered  our group to go next. Though my introduction of her was less than stellar no one yelled at me so I felt it all came out pretty good. Considering.

After introductions Dr. Jay launched into a lecture on qualitative research. I wasn't sure if this was the type of stuff I should be writing down or not. I looked around and saw that many of the others were scribbling away in their notebooks and binders. I reached into my bookbag and realized I hadn't brought a notebook. I didn't have a single piece of paper. This wasn't like being five years old anymore. At five years old your mom makes sure you have the supplies you need. No, this was like high school. Only being an airhead isn't quite so cute in the eyes of other students when they're forty year-old professionals holding multiple degrees. Asking for paper at this point wasn't going to be cute or endearing. It was going to be embarrassing.

I dug through every pocked of my bookbag hoping for something. Anything. Finally, I found a tiny pad of paper in the side pocket. The type you might expect a small police officer to use to jot down the details of a home burglary, I flipped open the cover and began writing. I was able to fit maybe five words on each line. I looked ridiculous hunched over this miniscule thing.

Many classes begin with a dumbed-down introduction to what you're going to study. Dr. Jay must have skipped this part. She launched into discussions of epistemology, internal scripts, content analysis, and clarification on the fact that "higher occurrence doesn't necessarily signal greater importance." I wanted to raise my hand and say, "HUH?" but I couldn't because everyone else was nodding their heads in agreement and even offering ideas and reactions from time to time. Knowing I had nothing to contribute I lowered my head and tried my best not to look dumb.

Can the others tell, I wondered.

It wasn't until my drive home that I realized most of the students in the class are at the end of their program. They've had a number of other research courses and are preparing to write dissertations. Only one or two others are like me, at the very beginning with little to no experience with research. I couldn't tell you which ones they were, though. They weren't escorted to class by a surrogate mom or taking eighty-nine pages of microscopic notes.

Priceless Pets?

A number of years ago, while still living in St. Louis, Tricia and I went to the Humane Society in search of a dog. We already had a four-year-old German shepherd at home but worried he needed a playmate. What made us think this, I have no idea. He really had no trouble filling his time. Large parts of Cosmo’s day were spent ferociously barking at the mailman, neighbors, and pretty much any and everyone who passed down the street.  He wasn’t that dangerous, though. Much like a vampire, once you were invited into the house Cosmo could do you no harm.

Concerned for his mental well-being, we went in search of a second dog. The Humane Society had a room for male dogs, a room for female dogs, and yet another room for puppies. After visiting both the male and female rooms – where we found that most dogs were more interested in eating us than making a good first impression – we swung by the puppy room. We had already decided that a puppy wouldn’t be an option because of all the time involved in taking care of one. 

Just a note – if you keep telling people that you really don’t want a new car but you find yourself walking around dealerships “just to see what there is” you’re either a liar or you’re stupid. We were stupid.

We were stupid because we thought we could look at all those incredibly small and wrinkly puppies whimpering up at us and somehow make our way back to the male room where a couple of Dobermans were sharpening their teeth on the concrete.

So forty-five minutes, and seventy-five dollars, later we were on our way home with a tiny brown raisin the lady claimed to be a chocolate lab. We named her Lexy and soon found out she had worms. After a trip to the vet we came home with some medication that quickly, but not inexpensively, took care of the problem.

Lexy was happy running around the house - sliding across the wood floors and into the walls. Cosmo followed her the first few hours but soon decided she was more trouble than she was worth. He decided to keep his distance. If Lexy noticed you’d never know it. She was too busy chewing on everything in the house that would fit in her mouth. Candy, rugs, furniture. One month after we brought her home we were into her a lot more than that initial $75.

Lexy grew and grew, losing most her wrinkles but none of her energy. She still loved to chew but I found that keeping her tired helped at least a bit. One day I was in the backyard throwing tennis balls for the dogs. Lexy was tearing across the yard in pursuit of the ball when it took a strange bounce to the side. She tried to stop all her momentum and cut to the left when her leg suddenly buckled underneath her. She cried out in pain and hit the ground. Stunned, and unsure what to do, I watched to see if she would get up. She did, but slowly. Lexy limped a few steps and fell to the ground again. I went over and carried her back into the house.

After visits to the vet and surgeon we found out she had tore her ACL. It would cost about $2,000 to have her knee fixed. Two. Thousand. Dollars. 

“The dog only cost seventy-five dollars, dude,” a friend told me. “Just get a new one. You’ll save $1,925.”

How much is a dog worth? The price you pay to get her? The cost of all those visits to the vet and bags of dog food? The amount of joy they bring you?

We decided Lexy was worth $2,000. She had the surgery and fully recovered.

This all came back to me yesterday when Ainsley came down to wake us up. She was sitting on our bed telling us about the baby deer she saw out her window when she woke up, the picture she colored for her bedroom door, and her plans to get her guinea pig, Charlotte, a snack from the kitchen. 

“Go ahead and get her a carrot,” Tricia told her.

“Okay,” Ainsley said. “She loves carrots and she also likes when I give her some hay.”

“Hey,” I said. “We have plenty of hay outside!” A few weeks ago I bought 1,000 pounds of hay from a local farmer for just $30. I was awfully proud of this purchase because it seemed like such a bargain.

“No, Dad,” Ainsley corrected me. “Charlotte eats Timothy Hay. That’s just normal hay.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked. “Hay is hay. They feed cows and horses with the hay we have out in our yard. I don’t know why a guinea pig would need anything better. “

“No, Dad,” Ainsley argued. “We’re supposed to give her Timothy Hay.”

“Yeah,” Tricia added. “Charlotte isn’t a wild animal. She’s a pet.”

“How is that any different,” I asked. “She should be happy to eat whatever we get her.”

Later in the day I was out for a walk with the very same friend who had, years earlier, suggested we get a new dog rather than pay $2,000 for reconstructive surgery.

“Let me get this right,” he said. “You can pay $5 for a pound of Timothy hay or $30 for a thousand pounds of this other hay?”

“Yep.”

“Dude, you gotta go with the thousand pounds for $30,” he argued. 

“Tricia and Ainsley seem to think there aren’t enough nutrients in it, though,” I said. “They think she wouldn’t be healthy.”

He thought on this for a milli-second.

“Even if she died,” he said, “How much is a guinea pig? Like seven bucks or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“So,” he argued. “A thousand pounds is going to last you forever. Just keep buying new guinea pigs. You’ll come ahead!”

A New Beginning

Long time no blog. While 99.99% of our new house is absolutely wonderful the other 00.01% leaves us temporarily without internet access. I’m so disconnected. Fortunately we’ll be back online in just a few weeks. Until then I’ll have to rely on free wi-fi  (which I’ve found is becoming pretty common in more and more places).

In the time since my last post a lot has happened. The boys and I hiked fifty miles through North Carolina. Some highlights included one six-mile climb, three observation towers, and twenty-one really cool mushrooms. We again escaped the rain and, although I crammed an air cast into my pack, I somehow avoided yet another ankle sprain. Good times.

Not long after returning we began school. Having spent a couple of weeks moving about from place to place (while we waited for our house to be finished) it was nice to return to some normalcy. Well, the sights, sounds, and rhythms were normal. The kids were not.  After three hundred and sixty days  of learning, laughing, and playing together, my group from the past two years moved on to a new teacher. They are just two doors down (literally eight feet away) but it’s weird to see them walk by and not come into the room. Many wave, and a few even run over for a hug, but they’re on to bigger and better things in fourth grade. They’re on their way to outgrowing me.

In the meantime I’ve been busy getting to know a new group. New groups take a while to adjust to. There are always a few days where you’re kind of mourning the loss of your old friends and wondering just who these new ones really are. Who are the funny ones? Who’s going to recommend books to me? Who loves to share stories? Who has a big voice that will lead us all in song?

The big voice is actually quite important. I can’t hit more than two or three notes so it’s always critical to have someone able and willing to lead the rest of the class in song without having us so far off-key that the neighboring teachers come barging in with hands clasped over their ears. It winds up this year it’s Laila. She sings out strong and has a beautiful voice. I’m so thankful for her. She has us all sounding pretty doggone good for only two weeks together.

We’re taking it slowly. The first week we learned two songs. This past week we learned two more. We’re generally a bit shaky for a day or two but we figure them out in time.  Hoping to help, I asked my old class to come in this past Friday to sing with us. I was hopeful they would jump in to help this new crop of singers find the melody and develop enough confidence to sing out strong. Boy did they ever! 

The fourth graders could have forgotten the smaller nuances of the songs.  They even could have come in and acted a bit too cool to sing with us. But they didn’t. They sang so loud and so joyfully. It was such a touching moment. It was another small reminder of how special our time together was.

This new group is warming up. They’re about ready to shake off the rust of summer and do some wonderful things. Among them will be to sing a lot of songs and even write a few together along the way. I can’t wait to see their personalities come to the surface as we develop a strong bond of our own. And, rest assured, we will. Two years from now I’ll be watching them pass by our classroom door as they steal a quick peek on their way to fourth grade. And I’ll long for the days we will have spent together. 

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Week

I've mentioned before that we're in the process of building a new house in the (kind of) country. We'll soon be living in the middle of seven acres of tall trees, short ferns, and all the critters that call them home. We're anxious to share this space with the turkeys, deer, snakes, rabbits, hawks, beavers,  and other more secretive animals we've yet to see.

While the house isn't ready just yet we've been out there working hard this summer. The first thing we did was to build a fire ring. The boys and I spent the good part of an afternoon collecting the stones to frame the pit. It's big. Real big. When the lot was cleared we asked the workers to haul a log over to the fire ring. We can't wait for the cool weather of fall and winter.

We've been working on another project as well - a trail leading to the 15-acre lake at the back of our property. The trail is about two hundred steps (I'm estimating this to be somewhere in the area of a tenth of a mile). We're using the thousands of rocks that are scattered throughout the property to establish the trail until it meets the creek. At the creek we've set some boards down temporarily but will soon be constructing a small 14-foot bridge.

And while we're hard at work so are the builders. At least most days. There are some frustrating days when no one is out there working and nothing changes. At this point they still need to finish the screen porch on the back, paint the walls, install the floors, hook up the air conditioners, bring in the septic system, put in the stone that will skirt the front, and take care of all the finishing details. That's a lot. We were hoping they'd be finished already but it's looking like we'll have to wait until mid-August - around the time school will be starting.

To make things more interesting we have to be out of our current house this Friday. Having no home, the girls are all headed to St. Louis to visit family and friends and the boys and I will spend the week walking in the North Carolina woods. I'm usually not one to get stressed by much but this week has tested me. Tricia and I have spent the past few days packing, loading, cleaning, making phone calls to utility companies, packing for our trips, attending a party, retooling our budget, arranging for a temporary home when we return, screening incoming kindergartners, mowing the lawn, trying to get nail polish out of the carpet, and driving Harper to the upstate for Girl Scout camp. There have been days when I feel like we've worked nearly all day long and nothing looks any different than when we first started. Fortunately, we're nearing the end of the week and everything is just about in place.

I spent this afternoon getting the food prepared for our seven-day hike. This will be the longest trip we've ever taken on the Appalachian Trail, both in terms of days and distance, and I generally spend about a week or two preparing. This time I've had only a few moments here and there to throw everything together. This includes figuring out our ride to Deep Gap (this is where we left off last trip), securing a ride into Franklin in the middle of the week to resupply, planning out a rough itinerary that ensures the boys will have fun, and getting the food together. Planning seven days worth of food that you can carry on your back is a bit tricky.

We'll be eating oatmeal or Pop-Tarts for breakfast each morning. Lunch will be a lot of homemade beef jerky, peanuts, dehydrated fruits, and Cheez-its. Dinners are a combination of noodles, chili, and spaghetti. A few nights we'll even have pudding for desert. This all seems simple enough but it's really not. I have a binder where I keep recipes I've found on-line over the past year. Having a variety of food that is appetizing is important. We're not quite there just yet but we're getting closer all the time. Muluken looked at the menu I created on the computer and said "We're having noodles TWICE?" Little does he know some backpackers have them every single night for weeks at a time.

When the food is all laid out on the counter is looks like a lot. However, once it is sorted into bags for each day it's looking pretty light. To help keep the boys hiking up all those mountains I add a bag of candy to snack on throughout the day. I'm not sure if the sugar helps but the excitement of leaving our limitations on sweets at home sure does. "Hey, let's stop at the top of this mountain and have another piece of candy!" There are few rules in the mountains. Whatever gets you to the top is fair game.

It is now Wednesday night and I believe we are on the verge of having it all together. The backpacks are packed, the suitcases are full, and we have one-and-a-half days to move out the rest of the furniture. I hope it all gets done. It'll have to.

This will most likely be my last post for a few weeks. I'm not sure when exactly we'll be in our new house and when we'll get the internet access set up. In the meantime we'll finish our hike, "camp out" on the floor of an empty house in our neighborhood, and start school. There should be plenty to write about.

How Do I Kill a String of Thought Provoking Blogposts?

My buddy Tim has a link on his blog for a really clever daily cartoon called "Basic Instructions." Each day you learn from topics such as "How to Be Kind to the Least Among You," "How to Refer to Someone's Not-Spouse," or "How to Recover From a Bad Shave." In all honesty, if you were to take this advice seriously you would quickly find that you have let your appearance go and all but alienated your friends and family.

There's lots of advice and how-to found on the internet. Much of it is very helpful. Just last week I mentioned to Tricia that I wanted a haircut but didn't want an ultra-short cut with the clippers. Not knowing how to give a scissor-cut, I half-jokingly suggested she find a video on You Tube. The next day she told me she found one titled "How to Give Your Man a Haircut." Sure, people go to school to both learn and hone this craft. But after a brief 4-minute video she felt good-to-go. She wrapped an old sheet around my shoulders and began to snip away.

A few days later we were preparing to replace the linoleum floor in the laundry room. After tearing back a few strips and seeing all that glue and paper still stuck to the subfloor we realized we had no idea what we were doing. Again, within minutes we had found and watched a video on the computer that showed us what to do. Seriously, how did mankind ever manage to survive the years before the internet?

I use the internet to find out lots of other things as well. I follow the news, baseball scores, blogs, and trail journals. I learn to play new songs on guitar and find recipes and tips for dehydrating food. I research things I've heard about in conversation, books, or movies. Most recently I researched Community Supported Agriculture - a partnership between consumer and farmer for a given growing season. After learning more about the advantages of knowing the very farm from which our food comes I again used the internet to find a nearby farm that offers Community Supported Agriculture. Within minutes I found Pinckney's Produce in Vance, South Carolina.

Is there anything you can't find on the internet?  I think back to the olden days of encyclopedias and have to laugh at the simplicity of our curiosity and the vast limitations of our ability to quench it. How would we ever have been able to answer such crucial questions as "How do you diffuse a bomb," "How do you howl like a wolf," or "How do you steal your neighbor's wi-fi?"

With so much information at our fingertips, it's hard to understand how we can be portrayed as knowing so much less than the many generations who have come before us. How could that even be true?

I bet I know how I could find out!

Running Out of Gas

A number of years ago I was talking with our neighbor about a growing concern, in the face of a new war in Iraq, that we should begin conserving gas. 

“How are you supposed to save gas?” he asked. “If you have to go to the store to get something for dinner or to pick up a prescription there’s not much you can do. It’s not like we drive around just to drive around.”

The fact that he was in the practice of pouring gasoline into the cracks of his driveway to kill weeds spoke to the fact he was not necessarily concerned with environmental issues. This, obviously, would have been a good place to start but one I chose to overlook at the moment.

“Well, I think the point is you try to combine trips whenever you can,” I argued. “If you need to go to the store and you know you’ll be picking up the kids from school later in the afternoon you could wait and do both in one trip. Or if you have to make a separate trip maybe you wait until you need more than just one or two things. I bet we'd both be surprised to see how much this would save.”

“Yeah…,” he said. “I guess that’s true.” Still, he sounded doubtful. I think he saw this as an imposition. He was not alone.  Many people see conservation as a hassle or an attack on both their freedom and their lifestyle. Many others see conservation as a political issue. 

We've been thinking a lot about conservation and sustainability lately. We're excited to be moving into a house that is 25% smaller than our current house. At 3,000 square feet it is still awfully large but given the fact we have eight people living in our household that puzzles out to only 375 sq ft per person. This is equivalent to a family of four living in a 1,500 sq ft house.

Large houses have become the norm. In 2009 the National Association of Home Builders reported that the average American home was 2,700 sq ft. Considering we average around two children per family that's pretty big. Gone are the 1950s when one bathroom was considered enough and growing boys shared bedrooms. Now days there's an expectation of private bedrooms for the kids and separate bathrooms for everyone - guests included.

I'm in no way arguing for one bathroom. I'm happy our kids have their own bathroom if for no other reason than the fact they are seemingly unable to rinse the sink out after they brush their teeth. But I'm concerned about building bigger houses just because we can. We made this mistake with the house we have now. It was convenient, but not responsible.

So as we prepare for a fresh start in our new house I think about all the shade those trees will provide us in the summer. I think about how nice it will be to sit back off the street, away from the heat absorbing concrete. And I think how great an opportunity this will be to make some changes that will benefit our environment. Changes that require little to no extra money or effort. Here's our plan...

1. Since we will be further from our schools Tricia and I have planned to carpool three times a week. This will save us 3,505 miles of driving over the course of a 36-week school year. We will conserve around 155 gallons of gasoline at a savings of $533 for the year.

2. Since we pass two grocery stores on the way home we'll  plan to stop and do our shopping rather than make a separate  trip (16 miles round trip) later. This will be 648 fewer miles on our engine during the school year and will conserve another 22 gallons of gas. That's a savings of $75. If we also stop to pick up an extra gallon of milk or loaf of bread on the way home (rather than making an extra trip or two each week) we'll save even more.

3. We're buying our own shower heads for the new house. At a cost of only $12 apiece (Niagara 1.5 GPM Massaging Shower at Amazon.com) we will reduce our water usage in the shower from two gallons per minute to one and a half gallons per minute. Seven of us will use these shower heads and will save a total of 16,125 gallons of water each and every year. At a total cost of $24 they will pay for themselves in just a few months while shaving the amount of water we use, reducing our pull on the hot water heater, and decreasing the amount of waste water going back out.

4. We're installing ceiling fans in each bedroom so we can remain comfortable while keeping the thermostat set at 79 degrees during the summer. We do this already at our current house but this time we're buying fans that have light kits attached. Each light requires three bulbs. Counting the fan we'll have on our screened porch there will six in all. That's 18 light bulbs! We're purchasing compact florescent bulbs for each fan as well as for the five can lights in the kitchen and the two lamps we'll use in the living room. That adds up to 25 energy saving bulbs. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, if every US household replaced just one regular incandescent light bulb with a compact florescent light bulb it would prevent 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. That's the equivalent of pulling 7.5 million cars off the road. Replacing light bulbs at this same minimal rate would save enough energy to power 2.5 million homes for an entire year. With our 25 bulbs we'll save the equivalent energy of running ten 100 watt bulbs each day for two hours. Given these bulbs generally cost less than a couple of dollars that's quite an impact.

5.  Six percent of our electricity use goes to washing and drying clothes.The number of tumble dryers has doubled every ten years. In 1981 only 13% of homes had a dryer. By 1991 this had increased to 27%, and in 2001 to 56%. Now, in 2011, 79% of homes in the US have a dryer. After refrigerators, dryers are the second most energy-drawing appliance. But unlike most other appliances there is no real difference, energy-wise, between models. The expensive ones use about the same amount as the cheaper ones. Some do have a feature that senses when clothes are dry and automatically shut-off, thus saving energy and costs. We plan to install clotheslines in our backyard (we're only allowed because our house is not within sight from the road). We generally do about ten loads of laundry each week. If we air dry three or four of these loads, thus avoiding the dryer, we'll reduce the energy-use and costs of running the dryer by 30 - 40%.

6. If we were to catch the rain that falls on our new roof each time an inch of rainfall fell from the clouds we would have 17,000 gallons of water. That is far more water than we could possibly use. However, if we add two more 50-gallon rain barrels to the one we already have (and purchase a small water pump to push it through a hose) we could water our lawn, wash our cars, or watch the kids have a water gun fight. All using 150 gallons of free untreated water. There are now even downspout diverters ($30 at Gardener's Supply Company) that route the rainwater into your barrel until it becomes full and then allow the excess water to continue down the downspout and away from the house. If we used these three barrels only 15 times over the course of an entire year we would save another 2,250 gallons of water.

We have other plans. They include...
*  Using window fans to push out hot air and draw in the cool night air at the beginning and end of summer
*  Buying Smart Power Strips that block power from flowing to electronics that are turned off or "sleeping"
*  Making sure the refrigerator is set between 41-50 and the freezer is set between 23-28
*  Letting dishes air dry rather than using the heated dry
*  Only placing full loads in the dish washer and clothes washer
*  Placing an insulated jacket on the hot water heater (or maybe even see about getting a solar water heater)

Most of these are relatively small and easy changes to make. Some we already do but many we don't. All-in-all I hope to see our power bill show a reduction of 25-30% kilowatt hours and our water usage drop by an even greater percentage.

Living in America, our global footprint is never going to be in harmony with that of the rest of the world. For everyone to live as we do we would need a total of 5.3 earths (you can find out your own number by visiting the Footprint Calculator). We could reduce that even more by eating less meat (one of the most significant changes to be made in terms of energy use when you consider the resources that go into producing and transporting it) or avoiding products that use too much packaging.  But this will have to be gradual. And everyone will have to make their own choices along the way. We saw an interesting documentary called Radical Simplicity that showed how Jim Merkel, engineer and director of Global Living project, works to minimize our impact on the earth and its millions of non-human inhabitants. What stuck with me most, though, was how careful he was to not judge others or pursue courses of action that would force them to comply with drastic changes. He decided, instead, to educate people and trust that they'll make whatever changes they can. That seems like a great place to start.

***Update***

Just a day after writing this post I opened up the newspaper and saw an article about new light bulb standards being set by the government. The article talked about how traditional incandescent bulbs convert about 90% of the energy they consume into heat and only 10% into light. These new standards would require a higher level of efficiency than the classic bulbs could produce, basically forcing them off the shelves over the next two or three years. This would save nearly $6 billion in 2015 alone and, at the consumer level, would save a homeowner somewhere around $50 a year.

While this seems like a no-brainer, some politicians are quite angry. They see this as government sticking their noses into places where they don't belong. Rep. Joe Burton, of Texas, stated "I'm not opposed to the squiggly tailed CFLs." Burton is a leading force against these new standards.  He said that forcing out the old inefficient bulbs "seems to me to be overkill by the federal government." He went on to add "If you are Al Gore and want to spend $10 for a light bulb, more power to you." Just to clarify, these bulbs cost nowhere near $10 and last much longer than the old bulbs.

Representative Michael Burgess, of Texas, said "Now the government wants to tell consumers what type of light bulb they use to read, cook, watch television or light their garage." It seems some, like Burgess, feel it's okay to govern family values but to regulate the efficiency standards of light bulbs is a sign of government going too far.

There are occasionally times when I feel issues are over-simplified by both the media and politicians to create good guys and bad guys in Washington. However, there are many  issues such as this that truly baffle and frustrate me.