Looking for some compromises

Here are some results from a recent poll concerning abortion: Only 10 percent of Americans support abortion rights up to nine months. Only 28 percent of Americans would permit abortion up to 23 weeks. The most popular polled position is a 15-week ban, which garners a collective 72 percent support.

In other words, the extremes (and this includes those who would ban ALL abortions, no matter what) may be loud and passionate, but they don't represent the vast majority of people in the country. 

I was not surprised by headlines basically describing just how much Democrats had to trim from the original multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better bill, often featured above the actual passing of a still-giant version of the bill. But I can't help but be bothered by this "bad news bias."

There are STILL politicians campaigning on promises to revisit the 2020 election, now 19 months in the past. Plenty of voters will continue to cast a ballot for such wackos, but it's just a game of "owning the libs" and showing fealty to their god: Trump. 

Most Americans, however, are well beyond caring about bizarre claims and are more interested in droughts and floods and inflation and monkeypox and school starting up for the kids...

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Here's the lead to a New York Times post today about the disconnect between reality and emotions concerning violence in America.

Crime, murder and mass shootings have dominated headlines this year. Just over the weekend, a shooting in Cincinnati wounded nine people, and another in Detroit killed one and wounded four.

But the full crime data tells a different story. Nationwide, shootings are down 4 percent this year compared to the same time last year. In big cities, murders are down 3 percent. If the decrease in murders continues for the rest of 2022, it will be the first year since 2018 in which they fell in the U.S.

Much of the discrepancy between what the general public "feels" and what is true can be blamed on what I often emphasize: most news is bad news. A casual TV viewer might think most of eastern Kentucky is under water right now, for instance, though the reality is that the affected areas are not that extensive. They are bad, don't get me wrong, but narrow valleys, poor infrastructure, and historically high amounts of rain have combined to create disaster for a small percentage of the population.

I assume many politicians will campaign on fear-based platforms, using old stats and inflated stats and random anecdotes to motivate voters to choose them. Most voters are not really paying attention to daily news and most certainly don't understand broader trends. This ignorance (and I include myself as among the ignorant in terms of many trends) is at the very heart of politics.

On a related note, today is the first day of school in Douglas County, and most parents rate the schools their children attend quite high. At the same time, they rate all other schools quite low. After all, they have experience with their own schools and the learning and fun their own kids are having. But they read about the rare tragedy or poor teacher or corrupt school board member and come away with negative thoughts about education generally. 

Were I a politician who was working hard to better society, I would quickly become depressed and frustrated by just how difficult it is to communicate the truth to voters. 

There will be no headlines about a slight drop in the percentage of shootings nationwide. 

There are no headlines about the 378 Americans dying from Covid each day, adding to the over 1 million deaths previously... just in the U.S. 

There were (officially) four mass shootings in America yesterday, with three total deaths among the 21 total victims. One of those was that Cincinnati shooting mentioned above. The others were in Pittsburgh, Birmingham, and Atlanta. I did not see even a news brief on any of those.

You would have to label those shootings as "bad news," but we now need our news to be REALLY bad to even make a dent in the zeitgeist. 

This past weekend, two local high school students about to enter their senior year were killed by a driver under the influence... senselessly, tragically. Their parents' lives are forever altered, and the first day of the school year at their high school becomes a day of mourning more than one of celebration of a new year.

But the other 2,300 students at Castle View HS are in the building. They survived the weekend. Everyone must quickly move on.

Until the next senseless tragedy or natural disaster or political outrage (these are not equal, I know). 

Last week was a great week for President Biden, for Democrats, and for progress. 

Biden's approval numbers will likely drop, much like gas prices. 

The bias of the media toward "bad news" is tough to overcome.

How can a writing student be more like an art student?

I saw a post today with some advice from Chip Scanlon's weekly e-newsletter, arguing for more use of imitation to learn to be a better writer.

He is not talking about plagiarism, but about finding great models that can help us develop our own writing "voices" by analyzing some successful voices. 

Here are some relevant grafs from Scanlon:

This practice horrifies some respected writers and teachers; write your own darn stories, they say. But if we were visual artists, would anyone look askance at visiting a museum to try and copy the paintings to see how accomplished artists used color and shadow and contrast?

I’m not talking about plagiarism. Rather, modeling is copying stories to gain a more intimate understanding of the variety of decisions that writers make to organize material, select language, and shape sentences.

Now’s a good time for my one caveat about modeling lessons: Always copy the writer’s byline at the top of the story in case you get deluded and confuse someone else’s writing with your own.

Properly credited, I start typing.

Scanlon types annotations after particularly good sentences, digging into technique, questioning rhetoric, noting tactics, etc. I must admit that I have not used the idea of copying out key paragraphs or dialog or leads from great writing in my own classroom, but I have used the modeling idea when teaching design. 

In the high school journalism lab, I would give each student learning Adobe InDesign a letter-size magazine page -- from Time magazine, for instance -- and the assignment was to copy the page on the computer screen. Copy the grid. Copy where the art goes. Copy the size of the type (best approximation). Copy the lines (strokes) and boxes. Copy the leading. 

THAT idea came from reading about art students who sit in museums painstakingly trying to copy the work of past masters, right down to the brush strokes, as a way to understand how experts produce their art. 

When I was a kid, I experimented with dozens of baseball batting stances, hoping for one that would feel comfortable and powerful and under control. I copied my favorites, like Ernie Banks and Mickey Mantle. I figured that if I swung the bat like a pro, I had a better chance of being a good hitter. It turned out that eyesight and reflexes and wrist strength and hip rotation and bat length and weight were all important factors... maybe more important than how I looked in the batter's box. But at least I had somewhere to start.

Unless you want to be an art forger, settling for perfectly copying master works is not a good long-term plan, and copying down lines from other writers is certainly not a good strategy when it's time to write that report or news story. 

But trying to reproduce great work reveals some of the HOW in writing or painting or designing or hitting a baseball.

It turns out that some very old education models, and copying qualifies, were based on solid thinking. 

If I were dropped back into a high school journalism classroom, some copying of favorite grafs would become part of my teaching strategy.

Why did the teacher shortage take this long to arrive?

Here is the lead from a Washington Post story on the meltdown in finding enough teachers for K-12 public schools:

Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.

The teacher shortage in America has hit crisis levels — and school officials everywhere are scrambling to ensure that, as students return to classrooms, someone will be there to educate them.

One thought here is about the structure of the writing in that first graf, with the three examples from varied places in the country (though all are currently dominated politically by radical Republicans). The promise is that each of those three examples (plus more) will be explained in more detail later in the piece.

The second graf functions as the "explainer" that shows readers why this story is being run right now, while also highlighting the importance of the situation. Some would call this the "nut graf," or the kernel of information that prompted the reporting which follows.

A second thought is that the teacher shortage is a direct result of right wing Americans and wacky left winger Americans to disparage teaching and teachers for many years. The culture wars and angry politics have combined to drive many teachers out of the profession while warning potential replacements that they are looking at a hazy future.

There are only so many people willing to take on a poorly paid job, with kids who are having trouble readjusting to life post-pandemic and parents who tend to think they know MORE than the teachers. After all, they went to school, and that makes them experts.

The nation has always had a streak of anti-intellectualism, but now one political party seems intent on crippling our public school system. "How dare those uppity educators try to teach MY kids to think logically?"

No one trusts anyone at this point in American life, and institutions are fair game for everyone to doubt and criticize and torment. 

It's a minor miracle that the public schools have survived all the turmoil, I suppose. Educated Americans tend to reject backwards thinking Republican ideas, so to win elections a logical strategy is to weaken public education and create more ignorant potential voters.

The less education people have, at least among whites, the more rabid people are for Trump and the cult.

A flimsy story got me thinking

Here's the lead from a story in today's Washington Post:

Miranda Dockett felt certain she was about to lose another friend.

After all, she had been watching them fall away over the past few months, as she became more vocal about her views against abortion. Then, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last month, Dockett, 31, readied herself for a worrisome confrontation with her childhood best friend.

The exchange lasted hours, she said, as the pair traded messages and news articles on Facebook days after the ruling. Dockett, a stay-at-home mom in Lansing, Mich., wanted her friend to understand that she believes life begins at conception and should be protected. Meanwhile her friend, who declined to be interviewed for this story, argued that abortion bans infringe on women’s right to health care and bodily autonomy.

“I suspect this will be the end of our friendship,” Dockett wrote in a Twitter thread recapping the conversation. “Heartbroken BUT it took me forever to find my voice & I will not be silenced even if that means losing every friend I have/had.”

So much to think about here.

First of all, the story later reveals that the whole disagreement rather quickly blew over and the two long-time friends have resumed their friendship, albeit agreeing to simply not talk about abortion. So one of my thoughts is this: "meh." Nothing to see here and no actual news. The conflict was fleeting and all the worries and angst ended up being wasted time and energy.

This is the sort of "journalism" I despise... manufacturing added conflict just to entice a few more readers. 

A second thought is about HOW they argued: over texts and emails and Facebook posts. It takes a special friend to not bother to pick up a phone and talk person-to-person. 

A third thought is that Miranda is one of those "single issue" voters, I assume, and now she just can't stay quiet any more about abortion. Her focus (likely) wanders when it comes to finding ways to support young families and abandoned children and childcare... I also assume that she expects women who do not agree with her to maintain their silence. It's so much easier that way.

My fourth thought is that all this was shared publicly on Twitter, the dark zone of social media and the perfect place to argue in random bursts of emotion without embarrassing yourself at King Soopers in the produce aisle. 

My final thought, not contained in this story but part of today's headlines, was about the landslide vote against removing abortion rights in Kansas. If even Kansans feel draconian abortion bans are going too far, that is eye-opening. There may not have been much polling going on for this, but the overwhelming vote seemed to surprise political "experts." Miranda is probably sad today.

I thought, once again, that all those pundits who are so certain of, well, everything, are often clueless. They are, like weather forecasters, often completely wrong, but viewers return to hear from them anyway. And believe them. 

Women can be the key to almost any election, when they so choose. 

It really IS a matter of choice.

We will be the grandparents watching 'Minions' today

It's been a while since Kathleen and I have accompanied young kids to the movies -- Grace and Anna prefer their friends, shockingly -- but we are off to see "Minions, the r\Rise of Gru" this afternoon. Good day to do it, with highs in the mid-90s. 

I wouldn't normally pay to see a "kids" movie, preferring to stream such flicks if needed, but it's a nice way to establish some connections with the young guys (they are 11 and 9). We have hit the pool for an hour the last two mornings and they enjoy that for a while... until they have had enough of that and are on to the next experience.

One nice thing we have been experimenting with is extending their bedtime to 10 or even 10:30. They tell me that their normal bedtime is 8:30, which seems quite early for summer and which seems to necessitate a lot of reading prior to turning in.

At our house they each get their own bedroom, which is not what they are used to. But they seem to be enjoying that tiny bit of extra freedom. Maybe Max (the elder) more than Jack. And they are sleeping until past 7 a.m., which is late for them.

It's good to be reminded that kids don't change all that much, despite the 61-year gap between me and Max. They love games, but now they are mostly Roblox versions on an iPad. They are constantly on the go, until they collapse. They are constantly hungry. They want to try a lot of things. 

I am inclined to pace myself in terms of, well, almost anything. I find it tough to eat even two meals per day (besides half a muffin at breakfast). And "new things" need some serious thought from me before any attempts are made.

Grace and Anna (17 and 15) dropped by yesterday afternoon for a few hours, which was a nice surprise. The boys have always worshipped them -- the cool older cousins. I'm not sure the girls are quite so enamored of the boys, but they are very nice to them.

In two weeks, Grace will begin her senior year of high school, and that is a fact that I can't quite get my head around. I guess she will always be a girl to me, much as her mom and aunt and uncle are, despite them all being in their 40s. 

I tend to think of former students in much the same way. My oldest ex-students must be about 63 at this point (yikes!) but they are frozen in time in my memories. Always 18. Always at the start of the journey. Always young and healthy and vibrant.

Like the grandchildren.

And fall semester for CSU and Metro begins three weeks from yesterday. That will always be my "new year" celebration.

It's good to be back home

Back on the grid, so to speak, after a quasi-family reunion in Carlsbad, California last week. Six of the eight siblings made it for at least part of the time, which feels like a victory when there are so many of us and we are scattered from Iowa to Washington to California.

The age range was from me (72) to six months, so there was a lot of somewhat controlled chaos. 

Masking appears to be over, by and large, even in the LA area, though you never know how many are fully vaccinated, boosted, etc. 

I see Mr. Biden has tested positive again, but has no symptoms at all. I guess that is news, mostly due to the virus still being "new." I can't recall reading any stories like "President Bush had a mild sore throat and a slight fever yesterday." Colds are old news.

I can't imagine how many times I might have had some version of some illness (colds, coughs, etc.) over the years, and no one ever cared. Sometimes, I likely had something but just shrugged it off. Heck, I couldn't be 100 percent certain I haven't had Covid already, in some mild form. I have had the occasional runny nose in the past year but nothing rose to the level of "I need to test." 

It's not entirely clear what Americans are supposed to do if and when they DO test positive for the virus. That makes all the CDC data a bit suspect, IMHO. If most people are not reporting their virus status, whether negative or positive, it all seems like a series of guesses.

Only one measure is valid -- hospitalization rate -- and even that may be suspect, since some states either have stopped reporting or are allowing late reports. 

I see some parents have decided to become one-issue voters over the whole mandatory vaccines and school closings issue. Cool. They can hang with the other one-issue voters: on abortion (yea or nay), on gun safety, on Hillary Clinton (still a favorite of so many to hate/love).

Meanwhile, there is a chance that the supposedly unpopular Joe Biden has somehow shepherded some critical legislation through a dysfunctional Congress, inflation is moderating, the stock market is slowing rebuilding, and Trump is in peril of several criminal charges.

The "experts" have already decided the midterm elections, it appears, making it seem silly to even hold the election. Let's just declare it "rigged" right now and let Clarence Thomas decide?

But Americans have the attention span of goldfish, so there are solid chances that something dramatic will occur before November and that white nationalist radicals will go so far as to appall voters and prompt a backlash to their bigotry and fascism.

So, masks or no, August is looking up.