Pilgrimage

Early last June, I participated in an art class up on Mt. Charleston. Although I had a passing interest in the project, I almost certainly would have found an excuse not to bother driving the 70 miles from my couch to far end of asphalt. I like Mt. Charleston, but it is hard to bend the inertia of routine to get up there.

My motivation for the trip came in the form of a writing assignment for Seven. Having some extrinsic motivation to write and knowing I am going to make a chicken or two in the process helps with inertia bending.

The day's workshop was part of a series of projects designed to get people up on the mountain, interact with natural media and create an installation that would last however long it lasted. The resulting piece I wrote explains the whole concept.

That day, our class installed our sort of gradated stone and woodchip and deadfall Viking longboat sculpture, although we didn't think of it specifically that way at the time. We put it in the middle of the wash, again, not because we thought it might eventually turn out to look like a boat, but because we figured natural events in the wash, like monsoon flooding, would fairly quickly scour our project away.

It turns out it lasted longer than I thought it might and now heading up the hill is at least part pilgrimage. Last Monday, my wife and I had a morning off and went up just because we could. The colors are changing and because it was a weekday, we would have much of the place to ourselves. We drove up, parked near the old ski tow site, and crunched across the dirt lot to the wash and there it was, not much worse for the monsoon season.


The mast has collapsed, but the hull and prow remain and worse, I am beginning to build an emotional connection with a transitory piece. Perhaps I will disassemble it, carry it down the hill, and reassemble it in our living room.

Running Laps

You gonna rewrite that shit next time!? Punk.

Why so many high school and freshman college students I meet think they get one shot at writing an "A" paper is beyond me.

Imagine a bunch of high school freshmen walk into the locker room at the start of the football season and the coach says, "OK, guys, get suited up. We're playing Bishop-Gorman(1) in an hour."

These 9th graders may have played PeeWee or street games, but never at the high school level and have had no practice, no play study, nothing. The kids might be excited at first, especially since they didn't have to do any of the grinding conditioning and fundamentals work. They never had to run laps, drop and give the coach 20, or memorize and run plays until they dreamed about them.

So the kids hit the field and get slaughtered and the coach says, "You all suck. You'll never play football. You have no talent, no drive, and no knowledge of what to do out there. Get out of my locker room!"

If your son were dropped into a game with Gorman and the coach didn't put the boy through a rigorous and repetitive training program that drilled him until he was exhausted and inspired to press on, you wouldn't holler at your kid, you'd scream for the coach's head.

Learning how to write well in the academic environment is exactly like getting ready to play the best team in the league. Writing well isn't a matter of talent, it's a matter of preparation. Repetition, conditioning, memorizing the play book and running the plays until you dream about them. Running them until you can spot a botched set of quotation marks in the grocery store. Running them until you can pull your own misplaced modifiers and vague pronoun references and subject-verb disagreements and sideline their asses. Running them until slinging together a 5-paragraph essay is as easy and automatic as driving to class.

(1) Bishop-Gorman, a privately operated Catholic school. In Vegas, B-G is synonymous with boost-your-football-team-with-all the-best-high-school-players-from-the-valley-by-handing-out-scholarships.

Artifacts #2: A Sign of the Times

I was first stationed stationed at RAF Upper Heyford, an air base a double handful of miles or so north of Oxford, from 1982 to 1984. In early 1984, I PCSed back to the CONUS and found myself in the antithesis of England: Nellis AFB, NV.

I missed the Midland's cool rain, soft green topography, and ancient peace. Vegas came on to me in all her brash exuberance, and I found myself pining and homesick for a place that was only my home for a couple of years.

Nellis is the home of the Red Flag exercise, and as such, routinely hosts USAF, sister service, and allied force units from across the globe. In 1985, a year or so after I left Heyford, the 20th TFW rolled into town to participate in Red Flag. I got to see some old line buddies and catch up on news. 

A tradition at the time was for visiting units to paint identifying markings on a piece of sheet metal screwed to the outside of the hangar out of which they worked for the duration of the exercise. When they left, Nellis personnel would come along, paint over the markings, and the next unit would roll in and the cycle would repeat. I was determined to save the Heyford sign, regardless of its intended transient nature. 

So, the night after the 20th packed up and left, I got off a long swing-shift at Eagle AMU and on my way out I Street gate, eased my truck up next to the hangar. I looked around for roaming SPs and saw none. So I slid out, and quickly popped out the retaining screws, threw the sign in the back, and rolled on home. 

The sign has followed me ever since. Before its current posting in my garage work space, it came back to Nellis and hung behind my desks at the 57 IS and 57 ATG, reminding me of that first tour.

Oh, and after I "liberated" the sign, I kept my eye on the unpainted piece of hangar. Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, CE had put up another piece of sheet metal. 

The new one was riveted in place.

Hemispheres

On one side , my dad's '66 Mustang, $3,000 bought new from Smith Ford and an heirloom now but still flying its original paint and upholstery and a radiator that can't quite hang with Vegas summers. This is the car that flung me through my late adolescence, threatening to to kill me at every turn. I love that car. I love looking out across its broad prow, watching it rumble and torque when I slap down the pedal. I love dumping pints of gas through the carb just to hear that old engine growl. The guts and grind of it all.

On the other side, our 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Advanced. Just saying the name gives you get an idea of how long it takes to get from 0-60. It's sleek and quiet and very polite. I love that car. It's like driving an iPad. I love easing down on the pedal and hearing. Nothing. Amps to torque to the grocery store for a trickle of kWh. I love the data, the charts and graphs and flowing arrows and arcing LCD mpgs. The Bluetooth and HUD of it all.

Looking for Mr. Prog-Hop

It's not easy for someone like me, 52, white, and baptized in the waters of 70s rock, to come to terms with hip-hop. I tried, at least I always say I tried, to pick up on what people were calling the great masters of the genre.

Sorry Tupac, you're just another Jim Morrison to me: charismatic wild-child buried early but lyrically unimpressive and musically uninspiring.

What I need is some Prog-Hop. Something technically demanding, multi-layered, and with lyrics that lean into literature. My students have tried to to help. "Lupe Fiasco," they say, "Here, Mr. Rice," they proffer, "you must try Immortal Technique." Not even close.

Now, I pick up this week's issue of Seven, and am teased by a piece on Ekoh by Camille Cannon. She teases me with lines like, "This year, Ekoh’s poetic flow is rippling deeper than ever." Even more  tempting is the title of his latest release, Zzyzx Road, which strikes a Joshua Tree chord in my latter-20th century bosom.  

I haven't spun the digital turntable on Ekoh yet, but I'll let you know the outcome once I have the courage to get disappointed again.

This year, Ekoh’s poetic flow is rippling deeper than ever. - See more at: http://vegasseven.com/2013/09/25/ekoh-resonance-man/#sthash.fnYLttDC.dpuf

This year, Ekoh’s poetic flow is rippling deeper than ever. - See more at: http://vegasseven.com/2013/09/25/ekoh-resonance-man/#sthash.fnYLttDC.dpuf

This year, Ekoh’s poetic flow is rippling deeper than ever. - See more at: http://vegasseven.com/2013/09/25/ekoh-resonance-man/#sthash.fnYLttDC.dpuf

This year, Ekoh’s poetic flow is rippling deeper than ever. - See more at: http://vegasseven.com/2013/09/25/ekoh-resonance-man/#sthash.fnYLttDC.dpuf

This year, Ekoh’s poetic flow is rippling deeper than ever. - See more at: http://vegasseven.com/2013/09/25/ekoh-resonance-man/#sthash.fnYLttDC.dpuf

Classroom Ephemera #1: A Study in Penises

I thought of making these part of my Artifacts  project, but decided these works needed to live in a space of their own. In Classroom Ephemera, I will present documents produced to last only a short period of time, normally not more than one class period.

Anonymous . Graphite on Notebook Paper . $475

Following this thread will allow you to return to the  strangely compelling, yet often utterly banal secrets of adolescence. It might be the last glimpse of a fading world of pencils and tightly folded notebook paper. The decade before Vernor Vinge's vision of skiving off ruins everything.

All of these works were given to me or confiscated in the course of the instructional day. I do not remember from whom they were collected or in what year. I have redacted any identifying features.

A Study in Penises

For this first edition, I thought I'd start with a deceptively simple sketch. Explicate.

Grandpa's Lessons

My gender identity had yet to coalesce

My Grandpa Lambert could rig up just about anything. He could shinny up a flag pole, sing along with his own piano accompaniment, strip an electric motor, and build just about anything, however inelegant. Most of his constructions, as he was wont to point out, "Weren't pretty, but hell for stout."

The man kept good company, drank congenially, and smoked himself to death. He had a 6th grade education but also knew what it meant to be educated. Educated people, my grandpa knew, didn't toil in coal mines or lumber yards like he did. They didn't work on printing press floors only to be unceremoniously dumped when bankruptcy killed a company and managers fled with the cash drawers.

He didn't "take no truck" with the educationally lazy. He and my father got along famously, the more so because my father brought education to the family in the form of an BSEE.

In the early 20th century in poor and rural Ohio, a 6th grade education was considered enough and few had any opportunities to go beyond it. By the age of 11 or 12, a young man was strong enough to begin work. And work meant physical labor. As my grandfather grew in experience, he began to understand what education could bring, but realized his opportunity had passed.

In my day-to-day contact with high school students, I find many of them do not really comprehend what it is like to work without a formal education.

Sure, there are examples of ambitious and motivated individuals who have done just fine without formal degrees. Steve Jobs jumps to mind. And there are plenty of examples of those with formal degrees who are back in their childhood bedrooms, wondering where all the promised cash went. Still, in the aggregate, more education means more opportunities and less chance of unemployment.

I have found, however, that older college students have an urgent understanding of this principle. They are investing heavily in collecting diplomas. They work, raise kids and cram in classes when they can. It seems real-world experience heightens one's perception of the value of formal education.

So here is my fantasy:

Allow students at the end of the 8th grade (two more years than Grandpa had) to choose between moving on to high school or moving straight into the work force for a minimum of two years. Adjust child-labor laws accordingly. Those who wanted to go to high school would proceed normally.

Those who chose to leave school would have some percentage of their after-tax income deducted from their paychecks and  automatically deposited in their parents' accounts to go for food and lodging. Junior high school counseling staffs would be bolstered and linkages developed between schools and local businesses. Now, 8th grade graduates who opted out of high school would not be required to find work; they could chill at home with their parents. This would go over well with their parents, I am sure.

At the end of two years, those 8th grade graduates would again be offered the opportunity to go to high school. How many would choose to re-enroll? Would their experience either of working for a paycheck or working at home and being constantly nagged provide the adequate incentive?

I realize I am riding on a unicorn over a rainbow here, because the probable outcome would be even fewer high school graduates with less opportunity and more instances of anti-social behavior. Most kids are not going to be like my grandpa. Kids would stay out of school, because the momentum would be gone and as they grew older, a certain fatalism would creep in.

Still, think of what it would be like to teach high school. It would be like teaching college.

Artifacts #1: Tony

Introduction to Artifacts

This is the first installment in the Artifacts series. The idea came from a friend of mine who recently performed a massive inventory and purge of his physical artifacts and told me he felt much better for it. His purpose was to retain digital images of objects in his life that carried some level of emotional value and then ditch the objects themselves. This seemed imminently practical, yet something I wasn't prepared to do with my own sentimental stacks.

With Artifacts, I am taking a middle ground. I will take a picture of an object and then write about it, but will not dispose of it. So really I'm just adding to its emotional mass. I'm not sure if this is wise.

Tony

In the late 1980s and early1990s, Lori and I got in the habit of scooping up animal bones from wherever we happened to be hiking or exploring. We mostly picked up sheep, cattle and rodent remains.

Knowing this, a friend of ours went back up to his Oregon ranch and disinterred Tony, a beloved horse who had died many years before of natural causes and whose remains had been retired to the back 40, there to reunite with the soil. He collected the top of Tony's skull, carefully wrapped it, and then mailed it to us. He told us that he was happy to give Tony a home, but we needed to respect the remains.

We were delighted to have old Tony's head, and even had a plaque made at a local trophy shop so that anyone who saw him, wherever he hung as we moved from base to base, would know his name. This helped Tony's legacy because a horse skull and name plate hung over your mantle is a great conversation starter. Try it sometime.

Now Tony hangs over the fireplace in our bedroom, which now that I think of it is a little odd, since nobody but us will normally see him.

He watches us while we sleep.

Counter-Revolutionary

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of Revolution on Netflix. Creator Eric Kripke together with co-producer J.J. Abrams have put together an interesting world and peopled it with potentially interesting characters who have very little interesting to say and get pushed along in uninteresting and predictable little arcs.

Action is at the center of each episode and the story moves along nicely, but I'm having a hard time giving a shit about what happens to the characters. Sure, a few of the crew get offed as the story progresses, but it's not like I really care. I'm more interested in seeing how Kripke and Abrams rationalize technical aspects of a world unable to generate any electricity.

The premise is similar to Sean McMullen's Souls in the Great Machine, but less compelling.

I was interested enough to stay up past my bedtime and watch the season opener this last Wednesday. I am still interested in the details of Kripke and Abram's post-electron world, and will admit to feeling a little something for one of the characters.

Plus, these guys obviously have a love for Zeppelin and Rush, as evidenced in the titles of two first season episodes, "Kashmir" (yes, the song featured) and "Nobody's Fault but Mine."In the opener, an extended reference was made to "Ramble On," and the main characters linger long enough in the vicinity of a street performer for him to play the entire chorus of "Tom Sawyer."

Fortunately, I don't get wrapped around the axle if the science is wonky, although I'd love to sit down and talk with somebody who is willing to bitch about all the ways Revolution hand-waves its way past reality. If you're one of those people, comment your ass off on this post. If not, comment anyway.

Revolution is a great RPG set-up, however, so if it builds up a Firefly-like following, someone with more time than and dedication than I could build a D20 plug in for it. I'd check it out.

Kripke's other major project, Supernatural, has also so far failed to impress. It has the same flat writing quality as Revolution. Not terrible, just mediocre, especially when contrasted with the high water mark of the genre, X-Files. However, Supernatural does compare favorably with Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It gets some great reviews, so I am going soldier on for a bit and hope it improves.

A Spoonful of Respect

I spent yesterday filling in for a colleague at Spring Valley High School:

12th graders.

Basic US Government.

All 5 class periods.


Now, I suppose at this point you're expecting a rant about the kids' complete lack of political awareness and general apathy. Well, there was some of that. Quite a bit of it really. I'm not going to pretend they were particularly up on things. Still, all of them knew the names of the two primary political parties. They were aware that there was some kind of debate going on about the budget, and a few of them knew what the NRA and AARP were generally about.

These monster organizations came up because the day's topic was interest groups and whether or not students felt they endangered our rights or were an essential bridge between the populace and its representatives.

Of course, the answer depends on one's perspective, which came out slowly as we moved through some basic questions and discussed the nature of rights and how people in general perceive their own arguments versus those of people with whom they disagree.

If Bohemian Ear Spoons are outlawed . . .

It seemed most kids supported liberalization of gun laws. The bulk of each class agreed that people should be allowed to carry around firearms. One girl said, "You can kill someone with a spoon. A gun is no different." Very few students, in fact only one out of all five classes, attempted to support more restrictive firearms policies for civilians. She vaguely indicated that "Yeah,but if I had a gun I could, like shoot you from over here and I couldn't do that with a spoon."

I thought, well, maybe with a Bohemian Ear Spoon.

In general, kids who jumped in proffered the same basic arguments we've heard in the firearms debate. Curiously, not too many really seemed to care about abortion. In one class, marijuana legalization was a hot topic.

Hey, it's cheaper than Earl Scheib

Without taking a position on any of the specific arguments, I used it as a lesson not only in the lobbying process, but also in how people argue. I pointed out that most people go straight into "what a fucking dumbass" mode when offered a view alternative to their own. This, I explained, is why bumper stickers do nothing but wreck your paint job.

I also demonstrated that if we disallowed lobbying by groups we philosophically oppose, we also risk having our group shut down. This seemed to strike a chord in some students.

It was great to listen and hear them try to work out ideas. I'm not sure how often this happens in schools. I mean, the teacher for whom I was subbing dropped me a note and asked me to try to get them engage in exploratory, open discussion, because he said it is difficult to get them to open up. I think I succeeded.

And as I wandered off the campus, I thought about the use of discussion in high school classrooms. It can be highly effective while at the same time can be an excuse for many kids to check out.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell the difference between an introverted kid who is just quietly listening and absorbing what is going on around her and a bored slacker just spacing out and waiting for the bell to ring.

However, I am more convinced every day that if I am allowed to do my job without worrying about headphones or texting or dropping an occasional piece of taboo language or dress code or trips to the Deans' office, I could probably get most of the space cadets to come around. It is a matter of speaking to them as equals who are early in their experiential journey.  You know, like you have something to share that's pretty cool, and they are welcome to chill for a bit. Whatever.

http://sprinklebrigade.blogspot.com/

True, some will act like fresh sidewalk turds on a summer's day, but I find teachers who skip being condescending and arbitrarily controlling tend to have students who are more inclined to listen to the teacher and to each other. Scooping the turds can come later.

In the end,  I worked hard for my chickens , but my reward came from at least one kid at the end of every class, who on the way out thanked me for making the topic interesting and told me they learned more in my hour than they often learn in weeks of note taking.

I'll take that.

Like Chickens for Elephantiasis

I offer a service. I can help people learn how to organize an essay, use a semicolon, and avoid pronoun-antecedent disagreement. 

Interested?

Bob is. He decides my service is worthwhile and useful as part of a larger goal of getting a college degree. So Bob decides to trade currency in the form of banknotes that have a value determined by general agreement for my service. Now, Bob doesn't give me his currency. He gives it to an institution who holds it for him until another institution, one that has agreed that the services I offer are useful to people like Bob, requests that currency. At which point Bob changes some numbers and currency shifts from the first institution to the second.

The second institution and I agree to cooperate. I provide my mad English skills and the people and structures within the institution act as intermediaries between me and Bob. Still tracking?

An English teacher who also washes cars

Now, on the weekend I decide I need to get my car washed because, you know, it’s about that time of year. I don’t want to do it myself, so I drive my car to a local car wash that has other people who have made agreement with the owners of the car wash to provide me a service I desire: doing their best to make my dented 2004 Civic presentable.

I hand one of these people a card that belongs to another institution who has promised a short-term loan for currency I have been promised in exchange for teaching Bob how to parse complex texts, and the car wash owners have some people soap up my ride while I sit on the patio and enjoy a coffee.

We take this admittedly simplified series of transactions for granted. Everyday we buy stuff and get other people to do things for us in exchange for money. We are, by proxy, offering our goods and services for their goods and services. It is very rare that people in the developed world trade services or goods directly.  I doubt that Julie at Green Valley Car Wash would wipe down my car in exchange for a quick lesson on compound sentence structure. Simplifying this system to eliminate proxy exchanges of goods and services through the use of currency is impossible in any culture more advanced than a Stone Age extended family. True, there are instances of straight barter in our lives. For instance, I traded my neighbor a piece of scrap lumber for a handshake and a bit of goodwill. My father traded permission to stay in one of his rental units for a few paint jobs on other units to a tenant who was unable to produce money. But this simplistic form of direct exchange does not keep a civilization based on specialization running. The reason I have hauled you, if you are still here, through my half-assed economics lesson is because I sometimes think people forget the necessary complexity of a modern economy. I keep running into people who seem to hold a view of economics borne of hyper-nostalgia and a romantic notion of rugged individualism based on simple transactions. They view the economy as an exchange of mutually beneficial contracts between equals: I make things, you can choose to buy them. I will provide a service in exchange for a service you provide. The problem is that love for this sort of modern economic fairy tale permeates some political circles and strongly informs the public debate on health care in America.

A few years ago there was a kerfuffle around Sue Lowden, a Nevadan with a penchant for the public eye and periodically successful runs for public office, who said, “Before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I'll paint your house."
She stood by her comment, and not only as figurative language. She implied that health care should be part of the marketplace and subject to negotiations of contracts between equals and, by extension, those who have something worth exchanging for say, a colonoscopy. If you couldn’t come to an agreement, maybe the doc wanted a cow instead of a chicken and you didn’t have one,  you were SOL. Or maybe you could trade some chickens to the rancher. But then we’re starting to get complicated. This implication by Lowden and many others that health care should be wholly part of the marketplace is something with which we have yet to really decide, even though we have made this decision with regard to many other services. We decided that the education of our children through the age of 18 is an essential service and something important enough to provide to all our citizens. We decided the same thing for fire protection, judicial services, major transportation infrastructure, and enforcement of safety norms. Sure, my Libertarian, homeschooler, and organic-veggie-for-hemp-sandals-bartering friends would argue that some of these services would be better managed by individual families at the kitchen table and with garden hoses, firearms, 4WD and a strong sense of caveat emptor. But wherever you stand philosophically, we live in a republic where the social hierarchy is built around individuals we elect through a system of mass expression to stand at the top and make decisions for the group. At this point, it is clearly decided that in general it is worth funding schools as well as fire stations, highways, courthouses, and the FDA. While there are some, like those Libertarian friends, who crow their disgust at many of these institutions, most people I know really just want to get on with their everyday lives, while throwing out an occasional Facebook rant or slapping on a bumper sticker. In poll after poll, most citizens are willing to gripe about some aspect of the services we as a society have decided to support, but are unable to decide which of those services they personally would like to do without. It seems crazy to me that one of the major services we seem to have been unable to address philosophically is health care. We can’t decide whether healthcare is like getting your car washed or like educating your children. We haven’t decided if keeping everybody as healthy as possible is beneficial enough to fund in the same way we do the other services we’ve deemed critical, or if health care is an optional service that should be available only to those who have enough chickens (or produced enough chickens by proxy) to afford it. Look, health care is limited. It will always be rationed. There will never be enough to service everybody at the highest possible level.

Sorry, there's only one of me to go around

Do we ration it via the marketplace, just like we do Teslas and Coach purses and valet service and landscapers and painters? Or do we ration it the same way we ration education, another service without enough providers to go around? Making health care a service governed by the same business principles as grocery stores will mean that quality and access to care will be clearly defined by the marketplace. Limited supply will drive demand and prices will adjust accordingly. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. Making healthcare openly available, as have most Western democracies, might indeed dilute the quality of care some people receive and where we submit our currency will shift from private companies to public entities.  However, those with no access in the market-based system will get some level of basic care. Should the ability of our citizens to access medical care be as important as their ability to access K-12 education, safe drinking water, and legal defense? Or should the ability of our citizens to access to health care be as important as their ability to access a movie theater, get their cars washed, and have their yard mowed? So, before we get derailed arguing about someone taking our money to give to somebody else, which is what happens in all modern economies, we need to answer this question: Is access to health care for all our citizens fundamentally important to the strength of our nation? Pass your answer up the chain. It may help us get past this mess.

Glow On, My Wee Droogies

We've come a long, weird way from cloth diapers. Now you can strap a glowing Disney princess to your toddler's crotch.

The ad copy for Be a Big Kid at Night urges users to  "Do the Glow Show" and the television commercial features an uber-dad dressed as some sort of android terrorist, with various Pixar/Disney character diapers dangling from his body like grenades. He robots his way into the kids' room, with mom as silent enabler and host, and waves a pair of flashlight beams at the giggling pairs' junk drawers. "Charge 'em up, hit the light, be a big kid at night!"

Dad and Mom retreat as she kicks off the lights, and the future therapy patients are left to stare at each others' bright, curving codpieces.

Personally, I can't wait for the Breaking Bad Depends.

Slaves to the Symbol

http://www.blogcatalog.com/

As an English teacher, I spend quite a bit of time discussing the importance of context, of connotation, of how diction impacts how what we write or say is perceived and, by close association, how we are perceived. Symbols are a big part of that discussion. I find that most of my students are not only unaware of the fact that we are swimming in symbols and that we take a huge chunk of meaning from them, but also completely dismissive of any need to be able to recognize symbols and how those symbols shape the way they interact with the world.

Kids often see symbolism as something arbitrarily assigned to books they have to pretend to read in order to pass, by people with no real-world skill sets. "Right, we get the rose in The Scarlet Letter and the role of nature in Macbeth. We get it because we skimmed SparkNotes before class. Whatever."

And it isn't just students who have this problem. Consider this article in the Atlantic, proffered by another friend who, as the wing historian, shared a hallway with me at Aviano Air Base. The piece discusses Brad Paisley's relationship with the widely recognized Confederate battle flag. My friend passed it along the day I published It's My Right! and it comments on the connection between Paisley, the Confederate flag, and that post's element of offense giving and taking.



Coates, the writer of the Atlantic piece, does a great job explicating the flag's symbolism to modern African-Americans, whose North American history as an enslaved group makes the flag particularly repugnant. This is the kind of strength many of my non-African-American students don't grasp. "It's just a flag. Why are people getting worked up?" And yet these same students wear other symbols, often eager to get them permanently inked on their skins. It's important to get them to understand that everyone is moved by symbols because they need to see how they themselves are moved and often manipulated in order to understand exactly why "just a flag" can stir deadly passions.

This general blindness, a meta-emotional deficit if you will, causes us to see symbols only through the lens of our own experience and accept our reaction to the symbol as normal and natural and others' reactions, if those reactions don't coincide with ours, as trivial or ridiculous.

This alternative opinion of the Brad Paisley question opposes Coates' view and illustrates how those who embrace the flag see it.

Both are correct, at least from the perspective of decoding symbols. Both sides view the flag in their cultural context and, while recognizing opposing points view, are generally dismissive. How you view the Confederate flag, a priori, will make you nod your head in agreement with one or the other. Confirmation bias ensures that.

However, it isn't enough to recognize that we recognize others' bias. It isn't even enough that we recognize our own bias. If we stop there we risk stalling at a shoulder shrug and sleeping forever between the sheets of moral relativism. We still have to take action in the world, the best path we can discern. We have to judge and act on those judgements, to realize our human failings and prejudices and to move beyond them the best we can.

There is no moral ambiguity in the case of the Confederate flag. It so strongly represents verifiable and widespread oppression and murder to such a large group of people that to argue that admittedly, the flag does represent a bad idea, but it represents honorable qualities as well, is disingenuous. It is like asking a judge to grant mercy to a prolific serial rapist and killer of many because he was also a good father to a few. As a nation we have long agreed that enslaving and oppressing people is clearly wrong, whether you lived in antebellum Alabama or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, whether you are selling human beings or cutting off little girls' noses.

What then, can be gleaned from this exercise? If you didn't listen in my class, you will walk away shrugging that symbols are there to keep English teachers in chicken and rice and will cheer when your team wins and be baffled or angry when other people bitch about your team's mascot. And you won't be alone.

It's My Right!

It is not unusual in the United States for special interest groups to voice their opinions in unseemly ways. In fact, it's part of how we do business and we pride ourselves on our general freedom to make asses out of ourselves in the name of whatever we think is important enough to warrant looking asinine.

Of course,  whether or not our demonstrative behavior is seen as "unseemly" is subjective. If you agree with those prancing and shouting, then you will view their actions as honorable and worthy. If not, you'll just think they are out of touch at best and fucking assholes who threaten the fabric of our democracy at worst.

Amped and Armed

So, where on this continuum does the "I love guns & coffee" crowd fit? It seems even some of those in the armed camp think their brethren may have stepped outside the reservation. A friend and comrade-in-arms from my Air Force days who also happens to live happily in not-Austin-Texas, is decidedly conservative, and who is very much on the side of open gun ownership policies passed along, with approval, this piece titled "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things:"

http://practicaltacticalpodcast.com/starbucks/

In short, it was published on Practical Tactical Podcast, a site that provides"information, news, blog postings, and reviews about the firearms and gear industry," and takes to task those gun rights advocates who chose to promulgate frequent and repeated open carry of firearms into Starbucks coffeehouses.

The Right to be a Total Dick

The Starbuck's demonstrators are Constitutionally correct, just as the Wetsboro Baptist church is Constitutionally correct. Both are exercising their right to express their beliefs in ways that will almost certainly disturb and offend their fellow Americans. In fact, I would argue that the whole point of "God Hates Fags" signs or dragging your Mossberg 930 along for a mocha has little to do with educating the public and more to do with irritating your fellow Americans.

Furthermore, I find the idea of a weaponized culture disconcerting. A society where being armed is the norm is indicative of instability, a retrograde to a time when fear of one's fellows warranted the bearing of swords or pistols or knives or shillelaghs. Some would argue that, well, American society is unstable and more dangerous and the truly prudent go perpetually armed. That to do any less indicates a personal helplessness and acceptance of de facto victim status. I think this is just wishful thinking exacerbated by l'amour de la zombocalypse.

Ladies night out

So I suppose there are two points here: 1) as Practical Tactical restates "Just because you CAN doesn’t always  mean you SHOULD." and 2) Do we really want to live in 1870s Deadwood or modern Somalia?