News & Articles

One advantage of living longer is the possibility of perspective. (Note I didn’t say wisdom.) As time speed plods force-ward you begin to notice. With friends deceased and activities out of practical reach, Fortuna makes sure you have opportunity to (between naps) appreciate her special gift of perspective. Funny where that goes.

In my rear-view recollecting are the teaching Nuns who acted with the sure knowledge they were ahead in learning and saw no reason to keep us in our state of noisome ignorance. Theirs, a simple, practical insight, wasn’t it? As a beginner student I floundered in First then Second until I was given a piece of paper and told “Give this to your mother.” That simple instruction led to handing over a note reading “This boy needs glasses.” Four words by a thoroughly ordinary Nun changed my life. Glasses allowed me to read what was on the board and follow what was going on. Dewey, the great educational innovator and thinker, did me less good than that observant Nun. As mysteries go, that one’s OK and worth the cost being called “four eyes.”

The dowdy, unprogressive education I was given drew clear lines. In class you study and behave. Outside is where you play. Here, let me rephrase. In class you’re a student. Outside of class you can be a kid. See the distinction? As a student I certainly knew the divide and learned enough sense not to muddle the two. But think how often we hear educators refer to kids and thereby, in my tainted view, miss the important distinction between teaching students and managing kids. It is a mystery to me why many educators so often select the less demanding term, though minding kids may require less effort than instructing students. Not that we’d dare, these days, to question or try to measure such things. No. we’re to take on faith the goodness and utility of teaching kids in an open classroom. I can’t explain that mystery, but there it is for appreciation.

Appreciate, too, if you will, the child-student suffering old style education being suddenly transferred to progressive public education for three months, back to the old, then the new again, all in one school year. Poor me. Three schools for Grade Seven. But with an adequate foundation a child who also sees a student side can make do. Is it a mystery I found public school easy and aimless? More mysterious yet, after I’d essentially missed Grade Seven the foundation I’d been given stood me above my age level. After missing a year I was still ahead of the game, at age thirteen good cause to continue loafing in the easy going, not too demanding environment of (in its way) decent and well-funded public schooling. The Nuns had often chastised me for laziness. No public teacher dared. Six years lolling through public school rode on a six year foundation. A mystery is: who got the credit?

Foundation, basics; when those go untended what do we get? A recent national newsline read “Woman pregnant with husband after two miscarriages.” Really? For a husband to miscarry once would be remarkable. Twice is exceptional. Gladly, we know who miscarried, even if the sentence does not. A foundation teaches the rules you can then break or bend as needed, but isn’t it nice to know you’re doing so?

Doing real estate I’ve encountered property line or description problems. I can’t fix it. Arguing won’t change it. “Get a survey.” “Talk to a real estate attorney.” How many, many times have I said such words? Often enough to know that some people prefer or need something to be het up over and argue about. My foundational basics tell me the fanciest argument will not change a surveyed line. I think it better to work out rather than argue out a problem. A mystery because I like to argue, not the pigeon style, mind you. The pigeon version of argument I leave to those I’ll kindly call “stupid” for doing it.

Age’s perspective on basics or foundation comes with time. No mystery there. Not that long past the climate scientists and experts warned of a coming ice age. Yes. A few decades of that led to science experts warming of warning. To date Winnipeg is not facing an approaching ice sheet and the Maldives have not been drowned. As I’ve come to see it, news needs only be something new. A new thing to draw attention is all the news needs. Simple when thought through. Is it mystery that this might explain quite a lot?

Curiously, way back in my university days sex/sexuality was seen as a continuum. And why not? Caveman with club and cavewoman by a fire was hardly accurate, was it? I’ve no problem there. Social sex-mating, etc., behaviors have been fluid, changeable over time, haven’t they? Appears so to me. Gender constructs are behavioral models. Whether a particular model fits you or I is a different issue, one where we can change or keep the behavior best fitting us. But now, mystery. Has fluidity became sets of fixed definitions?

In ways, and I pause to say this, LGB is homophobed by T treating LGB behavior-desires as a birth defect (an error of biology) that can be repaired. From a medical (can I include economic in this) point of view behavior is less income producing than use of drugs and surgery. Birth defects and errors in nature can be fixed. There’s profitability in good works. The transformation from fluid behavior to medical repair is a mystery, mystery being things difficult to unravel or see into. So on this one I say Good Luck sorting out the progression from behavioral tolerance to basic biologic repair intended (I’d suppose) to medically clean up roaming behavior. Is that it? Close? Possibly? Not at all?

Also mysterious, implementation of a fascist ideal to promote through government, education and medicine a new class of drone citizens dependent on their creators. They labor in repetitive meetings and operating theatres to craft the new citizen, neutered and with one purpose. Mystery, impenetrable, elusive, puzzling, unexpected, divine and forever free of reach.