Author Susan Jacoby's new book, The Age of American Unreason, is raising some intelligent eyebrows among the MPR crowd and on editorial and books pages of some dailies. Even USA Today, usually a bastion of vanilla journalism, opined, "Have we become a nation of frogs simmering our brains and future to death in a warm bath of mindless infotainment, rotten schools and a proud contempt toward rational thought?" I've been wondering the same thing.
The other day I got a raft of e-mail messages from several university students, who, bless 'em, are busy and typically don't write sentences longer than four words in an IM. But I was kind of taken aback when their messages were chockful of spelling errors. Not just little dumb typos, either. Big dumb mistakes, like "their" for "there." And even "their" was misspelled. Another: "shure" for "sure" in three different messages from the same person. These were e-mails from presidents of student organizations -- even the president of the student government. Poor spelling reveals poor thinking, in my mind, and at least displays a general lack of credibility. Or (and this is probably the case) absolute laziness.
I kick myself for being drawn to the likes of "American Idol," "Dancing With the Stars," and even "Wife Swap" on TV when I know I should be at least watching, um, "Jeopardy." And when my amazingly well-read mother admits to "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" I know we're in trouble. Why is it so much work to not only be intelligent but to stay that way? Because we're lazy, too.
It's gonna get us in big trouble, people. It already has. Intelligence is essential to self-governance, and we're a nation full of lazy buggers who want to fall back on platitudes, patriotism and and, yes, mindless pap. And if we don't do something to push ourselves a little harder, we'll get kicked off the planet.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
So ...
Why is it that I always think of nifty things to write in my blog, while I'm driving? Then I get a case of writing constipation when I actually sit down at the screen? Ugh.
Other questions I ponder today include the following:
Must I whine every time I blog?
When is the effin' sun gonna shine for longer than two hours?
How did I ever live before e-mail? (Answer: Probably much more calmly.)
Does anyone ever read this thing anyway?
Sigh.
Love,
Andy Rooney
Other questions I ponder today include the following:
Must I whine every time I blog?
When is the effin' sun gonna shine for longer than two hours?
How did I ever live before e-mail? (Answer: Probably much more calmly.)
Does anyone ever read this thing anyway?
Sigh.
Love,
Andy Rooney
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Zzzzzzz
I have Easter weekend church-and-family overload. Here's the highlight reel of my last six days:
Wednesday - Drove 200 miles to fetch 80-year-old mother who doesn't drive to the Big Bad Cities so she could spend Easter with us. It was a lovely day for a drive (at least the first half). She talked nonstop for 200 miles. She brought soup for us, which we ate for dinner on Wednesday. Senior citizens like salt and think red wine is "tart." The end.
Thursday - Spent two hours in church and went to the grocery store again. I bought lots of white food and talked religion with mom. She likes to talk about religion and especially priests she doesn't like. I don't.
Friday - Watched it snow. Cleaned house. Shoveled snow for an hour. Spent two hours in church. Went to the grocery store for stuff Mom needed. Like vanilla wafers and other colorless food.
Saturday - Took Mom to the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory to see the spring flower show, which was nice. Cooked half of Easter dinner. Spent three hours in church. Went to the grocery store again because GodknowsitsnotgoingtobeopenonEaster and the world will end.
Sunday - Made the rest of Easter dinner and had the kids and grandkids for a few nice hours full of very salty food. Seems like all those "traditional" dishes are seasoned with mostly sodium. I was up every hour all night long, chugging water.
Monday - My husband, God love him, took Mom back home and was willing to attack the list of stuff that needed fixing at her house. Remind me when I'm 75 that I will need a small apartment when I'm 80, or a staff to care for me and my house and my stuff. I went to the gym for two hours to recharge my salt-swollen body, ran some errands in the sunlight, played Legos with the grandboys for a few hours, listened to music that contained no references to crucifixion nor resurrection, drank a couple of glasses of chardonnay and (my bad) took a coupla sleeping pills and went to bed, alone, at 9 p.m. Ahhhhhh. Happy Easterisover. Alleluia, alleluia.
Wednesday - Drove 200 miles to fetch 80-year-old mother who doesn't drive to the Big Bad Cities so she could spend Easter with us. It was a lovely day for a drive (at least the first half). She talked nonstop for 200 miles. She brought soup for us, which we ate for dinner on Wednesday. Senior citizens like salt and think red wine is "tart." The end.
Thursday - Spent two hours in church and went to the grocery store again. I bought lots of white food and talked religion with mom. She likes to talk about religion and especially priests she doesn't like. I don't.
Friday - Watched it snow. Cleaned house. Shoveled snow for an hour. Spent two hours in church. Went to the grocery store for stuff Mom needed. Like vanilla wafers and other colorless food.
Saturday - Took Mom to the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory to see the spring flower show, which was nice. Cooked half of Easter dinner. Spent three hours in church. Went to the grocery store again because GodknowsitsnotgoingtobeopenonEaster and the world will end.
Sunday - Made the rest of Easter dinner and had the kids and grandkids for a few nice hours full of very salty food. Seems like all those "traditional" dishes are seasoned with mostly sodium. I was up every hour all night long, chugging water.
Monday - My husband, God love him, took Mom back home and was willing to attack the list of stuff that needed fixing at her house. Remind me when I'm 75 that I will need a small apartment when I'm 80, or a staff to care for me and my house and my stuff. I went to the gym for two hours to recharge my salt-swollen body, ran some errands in the sunlight, played Legos with the grandboys for a few hours, listened to music that contained no references to crucifixion nor resurrection, drank a couple of glasses of chardonnay and (my bad) took a coupla sleeping pills and went to bed, alone, at 9 p.m. Ahhhhhh. Happy Easterisover. Alleluia, alleluia.
Monday, March 10, 2008
We've got it all in West St. Paul
West St. Paul painter Carolyn Swiszcz (whose name has too many consonants for me to pronounce) and photographer Wilson Webb have created a cute little YouTube video tribute to our fair city. It captures the place so perfectly. You have to watch it right now.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
What's for dinner?
A friend recently bemoaned the fact that when she eats crappy she feels crappy, too. Likewise. Garbage in ... . Anyway. It's the time of year when food utterly bores me unless it contains alcohol and grapes. So if you have any bright ideas for dinner, I'm all ears.
This is on the menu at our house the rest of this week:
-- Pork tenderloin, baked sweet potatoes, fresh spinach-red onion-craisins in balsamic vinaigrette
-- Whole wheat ziti with turkey meatballs in souped-up store-bought marinara sauce and some kind of salad
-- Nicole's great pot roast if I can ever thaw the danged thing in advance. She browns the roast, then braises at 300 degrees for about four hours in a sauce made of 8 oz. Coke Classic (with the sugar!), a can of cream of celery soup and a 1/2 envelope of dry onion soup mix (like Lipton). Weird but absolutely fabuloso. Throw into the roasting/braising pan your peeled tates and carrots and voila! Perfect pot roast!
-- A Lenten meat-free dinner on Friday: grilled cheese, tomato, avocado and red onion sandwiches and Campbell's fancy soup in a box. I like the tomato-basil kind myself, but they also make a great butternut squash soup, too. Comfort-o-rama.
I love to cook, but at this time of year it's nice to keep the grocery list at a minimum. Money's tight and it's too danged cold to be lugging bags and bags of groceries across the windy parking lot at Rainbow. Besides, if I slip, I'll break a hip or something and miss the gardening season.
Speaking of gardening, it's seed catalog time! Spring can't be far behind!
This is on the menu at our house the rest of this week:
-- Pork tenderloin, baked sweet potatoes, fresh spinach-red onion-craisins in balsamic vinaigrette
-- Whole wheat ziti with turkey meatballs in souped-up store-bought marinara sauce and some kind of salad
-- Nicole's great pot roast if I can ever thaw the danged thing in advance. She browns the roast, then braises at 300 degrees for about four hours in a sauce made of 8 oz. Coke Classic (with the sugar!), a can of cream of celery soup and a 1/2 envelope of dry onion soup mix (like Lipton). Weird but absolutely fabuloso. Throw into the roasting/braising pan your peeled tates and carrots and voila! Perfect pot roast!
-- A Lenten meat-free dinner on Friday: grilled cheese, tomato, avocado and red onion sandwiches and Campbell's fancy soup in a box. I like the tomato-basil kind myself, but they also make a great butternut squash soup, too. Comfort-o-rama.
I love to cook, but at this time of year it's nice to keep the grocery list at a minimum. Money's tight and it's too danged cold to be lugging bags and bags of groceries across the windy parking lot at Rainbow. Besides, if I slip, I'll break a hip or something and miss the gardening season.
Speaking of gardening, it's seed catalog time! Spring can't be far behind!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
A chilly school day and other ruminations of parenthood
This morning is one of those that make me long for the days of former Gov. Arne Carlson, who famously closed schools when he thought it was too cold for man or beast. On my way to work this morning, the thermometer registered a balmy -13. And the windchill was -30-something.
Then again, I don't have kids in school. Thank God. I am so glad to be finished with those years. I feel like I went to grade school, high school and college at least four times: once myself, and once again for each of my children. When the first kid starts school, the experience kind of takes you back. It's a nostalgic kind of thing: You get a kick out of the wide-ruled notebooks, the No. 2 pencils, the first experience of detention, the challenge of dealing with a bad grade, a cold shoulder or a broken heart. By the time you've done this over and over and over again, it's just plain tiresome. Makes me wonder how those St. Paul Irish-Catholic moms with the nine or 10 kids managed to keep sane by the time the last one got on the bus. An old friend, a middle child among nine, said her mom "went on retreat" a few times. Only when she was in her 40s did she learn her mom actually went into rehab for alcoholism!
Today the whole "kids in school" phase of parenting is even more difficult. I notice that parents of students at the university where I work are involved to a point of being so overprotective that I think their kids will never earn their independence. But the world is much more a place to be protected from than it ever used to be. When I was in college I called my mom (or she called me) about once every couple of weeks. A long-distance phone call was like a bon bon: an expensive, short-lived treat. Today, college kids talk or IM with their parents every day.
Parents of young children, please note: You really won't want to talk to your children every day when they're in college. If you have more than one child, this practice will frazzle your nerves and wear you out. You don't need to know when your kid fails a test, had his car booted for unpaid parking tickets or yelled at a slobby roommate. He'll work it out without you, and he'll work it out better in the long run. Really. Look at it this way: When your co-workers steal your lunch from the employee fridge, who you gonna call? Mom? Seriously.
To be continued ...
Then again, I don't have kids in school. Thank God. I am so glad to be finished with those years. I feel like I went to grade school, high school and college at least four times: once myself, and once again for each of my children. When the first kid starts school, the experience kind of takes you back. It's a nostalgic kind of thing: You get a kick out of the wide-ruled notebooks, the No. 2 pencils, the first experience of detention, the challenge of dealing with a bad grade, a cold shoulder or a broken heart. By the time you've done this over and over and over again, it's just plain tiresome. Makes me wonder how those St. Paul Irish-Catholic moms with the nine or 10 kids managed to keep sane by the time the last one got on the bus. An old friend, a middle child among nine, said her mom "went on retreat" a few times. Only when she was in her 40s did she learn her mom actually went into rehab for alcoholism!
Today the whole "kids in school" phase of parenting is even more difficult. I notice that parents of students at the university where I work are involved to a point of being so overprotective that I think their kids will never earn their independence. But the world is much more a place to be protected from than it ever used to be. When I was in college I called my mom (or she called me) about once every couple of weeks. A long-distance phone call was like a bon bon: an expensive, short-lived treat. Today, college kids talk or IM with their parents every day.
Parents of young children, please note: You really won't want to talk to your children every day when they're in college. If you have more than one child, this practice will frazzle your nerves and wear you out. You don't need to know when your kid fails a test, had his car booted for unpaid parking tickets or yelled at a slobby roommate. He'll work it out without you, and he'll work it out better in the long run. Really. Look at it this way: When your co-workers steal your lunch from the employee fridge, who you gonna call? Mom? Seriously.
To be continued ...
Thursday, February 14, 2008
If this is some kind of copyright violation, so sue me
One of my friends sent this wonderful cartoon today. It serves to remind me that in matters of life, love and money, you have to make room, above all, for laughter. Trite but true, laughter makes it all bearable. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone who makes me laugh so regularly. I think I'm losing weight because of it. Really, it's working!
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