Charity for the rest of us!

Remember when you spent too much money and to make the months rent you would throw a party and charge by the head, so you could get together enough money to pay the rent? How many times have you been to a fundraiser for some charity organization, or for someone who is in dire need of some financial assistance? Ok, now take these two ideas and merge them into one thought. Perhaps the time has come to throw a few " get someones ass out of hock" parties!!

The idea is this: throw a party like any fundraiser for charity, charge at the door, do 50/50 raffles, and some door prizes. But each person will have the chance to be the beneficiary of the party. by putting their name in the fishbowl along with one bill that they must apply the money to. Somewhere near the middle of the party the name is drawn. On Monday morning the deposit is made in their bank account and the check is written to the designated creditor. This person then must attend the next party for the next name drawn from the bowl. In order for it to work, each winner must continue to help the cause. One may not win and then not help the next party. no selfish bastards allowed!

If by some miracle of the divine winds, someone is not in need of assistance, they may put in the name of somebody that they feel is deserving of the assistance. These days there are far too many people who are on the edge, and helping a few of them is a great idea. Why do you have to be sick to get some help? why not help some of the working stiffs who are barely making it?

It sounds odd, but for most people, just getting one big bill out of the way, could free up the finances enough to make the ends come together again and keep the knee breakers from knocking on the door.

So who's in? and rememeber the bigger the party, the bigger the benefit!

Small town thoughts

what makes a small town and small town? When is it no longer a small town? It seems that in recent years the term "small town values" has begun to show up in our lexicon more and more often, but what are true small town values? Is it a Hollywood thing? Is it something that is mythical, or is it something real?

I happily consider myself a small town guy. I grew up in a small town. The school where i received the brunt of my formal education had a total student population of 2600, give or take. I went to an even smaller school for one year where the total was closer to 1200 students, and now my nephews attend classes in a school that educates about 900 students. The student to Teacher ratio in these schools is such that students get help when they need it, and trouble can be caught and corrected early.

So first, to me, "small town values" are about education. Teachers still care, and the students are engaged and actually learning. I can't say that every student is a good student, but I have seen a correlation between class size and the success rate of the students. In the smaller schools it is much more likely that a higher percentage of pupils will stay in school, and reach graduation. Not only will they graduate, but a higher percentage will continue on to college. Now I know that you're thinking, "Well, Duh! Less students means that there is a better chance that there aren't as many laggards or unmotivated kids." What I mean is that the percentages are per capita. In urban schools the ratio is between 20-50 students out of 100 who go on to higher education after graduation. This is after the attrition rates of dropouts between Kindergarten and Graduation, which is somewhere in the 25 percent range, depending on the source you look at. The dropouts in small town schools are closed to 2-5 percent for the same period. More students stay in school, more reach graduation. But "more" is just a perception, because when 48 students graduate from a small town school and go on to college, the same year 1300 student could graduate from a city high school and 25% of them go on to college, that means that more kids from the city school go on to college. 52 vs 48. So this evens out a little bit. But the truth here is that a small town student is MUCH more likely to stay in school and go on to a higher education. ( What they do with it is immaterial at this point in the discussion!)

Second, a small town allows one to know their neighbors. This signals both safety and accountability, both excellent values. When you go to school in a class of 200 kids it is very likely that by the time you graduate you will know every one of your classmates. Whether you like them or not is a whole different discussion, but you know them all by name and face. Not only that, it is highly likely that you know many of their brothers and sisters, as well as who is related to whom. You know the family lines and most likely the family histories as well. If your family has many generations in a town, then you most likely have family in the class as well. ( I didn't, but many of my friends did) When you grow up in this environment, you know who does what and who is most likely to get into what kind of trouble. You know who the fighters are and who the vandals are, you know the bullies and the bullied. You know who is a hunter and who is a vegan. You know who has a grudge against whom. This means that when something happens in town, you generally have an idea of who is the culprit, or the target. It is unlikely that the guilty party will go unpunished for long. Try as you might there are very few real secrets in a small town. Somebody saw something and sooner or later it will get mentioned to someone who knows what was going on. Once 2 and 2 are put together, justice is swift and final. It's one reason why small towns are seen as "safe" because of the familiarity of the people with each other. This familiarity also breeds accountability. Do you think it is easy to hide your guilt from the nice lady down the street who used to babysit you when you were little, after you have driven through her flower-beds coming home drunk the other night?

I know that many people equate the small town with the religious right as well, but I don't really think this is always true. Yes, there is the element, but I think that it truly depends on the region. Some towns are like this, some are not. The town that I grew up in, is not one of these, even though some have tried to make it so in the past. In fact I know that my town is pretty evenly divided in this respect. It is not the religion that defines the overall morality of a town, it is the integrity of it's neighbors. Nobody needs a church doctrine to teach them to treat their neighbors with respect. Being humane is not necessarily a human trait, but education and civility get it ingrained better than the fear of some mythical omnipotent being. Look at how many people are taught the 10 commandments and yet they treat them like the 10 suggestions.

So when does a small town lose it's small town-ness? I postulate, that it comes when you no longer know your neighbors. When your kids go to a school with so many kids that they don't know them all by name, you can assume that you don't live in a small town. If you elect a mayor because he is fully qualified rather than because you went to school with him or his kids, you are likely to live in a big town, or Fates help you, a City! Yikes!

I like my small town just fine. My values are worth emulating. No reason to think being small town is a bad thing!

Why is Peace so Elusive?

I don't wish to sound like a sap here, but I have to wonder and I decided to wonder on a page, Why is peace so elusive? What is it about the Jews and the Palestinians, and the Sunnis and the Shiites, and the crap in Darfur? Is it a religious difference? What is the difference? 2000 years ago when these religions took hold it was a better way to control people and hold on to resources.

Religion was and is the new mythology. I can't be convinced that it is now or has ever been a good thing. How can something that is supposed to be so beneficial to the people be used so blatantly to kill and maim someone else? Once in our history there was actually some sense to the violent side of the religion, because you wanted an army that would follow it's leaders into the the face of the raging enemy. They needed to protect their vital resources, their crops and their people. There was a need to tell the troops that they would end up in a better place when they died for "the cause" and it gave them a reason to fight without the fear of dying. It was also a way for leaders with limited resources to keep their populations under control. I know it sounds callous, but think about the tyrants of old, what better way to have enough grain stores to get through the winter than to get a chunk of the population killed? Especially after a particulary lean harvest. That was one of the reasons for the caste system, the royals and ruling classes were taught to see the lower classes, and serfs as no more than chattel, pawns to be used for their own amusement and benefit. You wish to gain something from the neighboring kingdom? Send in an army of the lower classes as cannon fodder to get the attention of the neighboring king and maybe even have a victory and get what you were wanting. Now it's not so clear cut.

Today the world is smaller and the resources much more mobile and easier to distribute. Why is it that a country as large as Russia feels the need to argue over the resources that they have to sell? They have enough oil in their fields to give OPEC a run for their money, yet they are quibbling with over prices with half of Europe and the former Soviet Republics. I understand National pride, but not the need to control more land and more resources. What is it about human greed for Control! "If you don't believe as I believe then you must die as it is the only form of control that I can exert!" The thought process eludes me on this one. There are cat lovers in this world who understand that not everything is easily within our control. Dog lovers on the other hand wish for instant obedience and gleeful worship from their subjects.

Why is it that there is so many people who believe that, "it's my way or the highway( to hell)?" So much of the world lives with self imposed blinders on, never willing to look beyond their narrow view for whatever reason. Usually the reason is ideological, they are taught not to question authority, be it religious or governmental. The Pope imposes his will upon the devout Catholics around the world, no birth control, you must breed! No meat on Friday, No wait that's not the rule any more... Oh I know , give the Church 10% 0f your gross pay, or you will not get into Heaven! No sex Before Marriage, Says the Celibate priest! Muslims claim to have the peaceful religion yet the radical among them find in their Koran the words to inflame passions to the point that their youth will die in a fiery explosion with bombs strapped to their bodies in hopes of getting into Paradise. The world here sucks so bad that they take the easy way out! Sure it sucks here, their woman are treated like so many goats or horses and they aren't allowed to even look at them until they're married. They have to stop and pray how many times a day, and kiss the ground wherever they happen to be. Yuck, I would be willing to blow myself up to get out of living like that too! But why is it this constant drive to make the others live as you live? Why must there be a conversion? If I live my life without causing you harm, and I can do business with you honestly and openly, why must I believe the same mythology that you believe? What difference does it make to me or you? If I don't insist that you live like I do, why must you insist that I live like you do?

Some of the death and destruction is no more than a hillbilly feud that has carried on since time immemorial. The Jews killed a Palestinian and then the Palestinians killed a Jew to retaliate and it has since gone on as ever, and ever escalating. Yet there are Jewish kids and Palestinian kids who play soccer against and with each other in the streets of Jerusalem, they know no malice, simply the face of a friend and a fellow player. There is so much focus on the differences by the adults that they forget what it was like to be a child and only know your friends, and the things that you shared. Children don't know prejudice, it is taught to them and that is a shame. It takes no more effort to teach a child tolerance and understanding than it does to indoctrinate them with hatred and a narrow minded world view. I could never understand the need to pass such destrcutive teaching from one generation to the next. Did your Grandfather's grandfather's grandfather die so that you could send your son to his death? No, of course not, he died hoping that his children would be able to live in peace.

The Human race is quite unique on the plant Earth, as we have both the means to destroy ourselves completely, or the means to elevate ourselves into the stars and to truly find the secrets of the universe. Sadly the former is the most likely scenario, because in order to elevate, we must first have a peaceful society that can co-operate within all of the relms of science and technology, and rather than use the knowledge to try and destroy one another, use it to expand the horizons of human knowledge. In every field of human endevour we could advance, simply by eliminating the need to dominate each other, and pool our resources and knowledge for the good of all. We could feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. We could send our species into the solar system beyond the Moon, and beyond Mars and out into the limitless Universe. We could gain so much from simply shedding the old prejudices and learning from our children, how to focus on the good stuff, and to not bother about the differences.

I want to believe that there is a future where the need for weapons of mass destruction no longer exsists. I want to believe that Humanity will opens it's eyes one morning and realize that the answer to all of our problems is to stop the killing and to start the healing. Political lines and religious lines become meaningless and useless because there is not a need for division, when we will all work towards the next step for the entire species, and not just for our own greed, but the future of our children and their children's children.

Odd friends...

Not really "odd" As in Strange, but rather, odd as in Odds and ends. This is not to say that they are by any means the last friends or the ones that you don't know what to do with, but more the ones that seem to have the most interesting stories either in the meeting or the living with.

There are all kinds of friends in our worlds, we have Old friends that we have known since childhood, the ones who know some of our deep dark secrets, the ones that we may not want knocking on the door if we run for political office, the ones who know what we looked like before the Nose Job! We have Work friends, whom we only know from work, it is lucky if we actually know their last name let alone how to reach them outside of the workplace. Yet we seem to know everything else about them, family's troubles, vacation plans, how much they pay or receive in child support, way more than we really should for someone we only know in one sphere of our lives. There are our Bar friends and our Team friends, and College friends, Military friends and even the Friend of a Friend friends, but then there are those rare people that we meet in some unexpected and often odd way, perhaps you shared a room in a hospital, or your children did. Maybe you met by accident, literally, when you backed into each other at the super market. But the ones that I am actually referring to are probably the newest odd friend out there, the Online Friends. These are people that you have met through no particular effort to make friends but rather through a shared interest in something that you found online. Many people will go the rest of their lives only ever knowing these friends by their avatars and their Messenger Id's or AIM names, or Skype, Google, ICQ or who knows what else. You may know their email address and never know their home address, or perhaps you have exchange paper christmas cards and not just ecards. Maybe you have been brave and sent them actual pictures, or if they were local you met at a bar or a restaurant. You find out that not only do you share the interest that you have already shared, but a whole slew of others too. We never know what will bring us together whether it will be a common singer, and interest in a particular artist, A comic strip, or knitting with hand-spun angora yarn. Who knows what you have in common with your online friends, but they are your friends and they are often only your friends, not anyone else in your family, or for that matter anyone else you know. They are better than an imaginary friend, but just as much yours alone.

Life can give you some interesting twists if you are willing to explore beyond the end of your front porch. A little over 11 years ago, not too long after I began in earnest to look around the internet and discover the new world that was there for me, I began to make some of my very first online friends. It happened quite by accident, I was looking for information in the best way available at the time, I was posting to an online message board looking for tour information for my then current favorite singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. After I posted my question, I came back the next day and found this laundry list of subjects under discussion and some I felt the need to enter my own opinion about, so I did. Well, I never did get the information I was originally looking for, but I ended up with this core group of people who all basically felt the same way about most subjects and had a lot of interesting things to say. The funny thing was that at the time this group ranged in age from 16 to 53 ( I'm guessing here at the 53, but the neighborhood is close!). It was about 10 people and there was at least one family connection in the group. We were scattered across the country from Maine to California, Oregon to Florida, as well as a few scattered through the midwest. Over a couple of years we kept in contact and had lots of interesting discussions and arguments. We always defended each other and had a blast learning new and interesting things about who we were, where we lived and what we did. When the youngest of the crew were old enough to do so we planned a meeting. We decided that a cool summer vacation would be the best way to do this and since the biggest concentration were on the west coast, that was where we would meet. And we did just that, we traveled across the country in our chosen chariots and we congregated in Los Angeles, California in July of 2000.

Of that core group I still have contact with three of them regularly and one or two sporadically. One of them turned out to be my mental twin. we have the same ideas at the same time from the same stimulis. It' is rather disconcerting at the beginning , because you are never ready for someone to throw your own thoughts at you as fast as they are coming into your own head!! Thanks Johnny! We stayed mainly at the apartment of one member all congregated in a four room two bedroom, two bath apartment on Shenandoah. But we also invaded the home of another set of friends too. These were Johnny's Mom and Step-dad, Mummy and Scotty. Two of the coolest people on the planet. Knowing us from only the internet and our words on the screen, they opened their house to us (and especially me, I will elaborate later) and we had a great time. And these three people are still in my life to this day. Why do I say they opened there house especially to me? Because they decided to take some long deserved vacation time from their jobs and show me California on a motorcycle!

It had long been my dream to ride the Pacific Coast Highway. Now I would truly like to ride it from San Diego to Vancouver, but I knew that this would be way more than I could do in one little vacation, so I decided to follow the advice of the natives that I knew and they showed me The best part of the road. We took a 5 day 1300 mile journey through California. On the first day we left Orange County and headed north, getting on PCH in San Luis Obispo and riding that twisting, turning, beautiful two lane blacktop all the way to Monterrey. The next day we looked around and eventually headed inland to visit Yosemite National park. 2 days later we toured through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National parks. Then we did some real highway riding and I got to travel through the Grapevine. I saw Bakersfield, and Big Sur, Carmel, and Hurst Castle, Morrow Bay, Whales and Dolphins. Grants Grove, Old Dome, Bald Dome, Tioga trail, and who knows what else. The journey itself would make a nice book, but there are loads of pictures to prove it!! And two of my favorite people in the world as accomplices and witnesses! LOL I rode a motorcycle through rush hour traffic in Los Angeles, California and survived! It was cool.

Then there are the Surprise friends that you meet online. Maybe you meet them in a chat room, or a a discussion group, but it is a place where you truly don't expect to find them. I have one of those too, and I met her in person that same summer. As I recall it all started over a discussion of firearms and who should and shouldn't have them. Being the radical that I am, I truly believe that all law abiding citizens should have and be trained in the use of weapons. Since the criminals have them it's only right that we do to. Anyway she agreed with me. And it turned out that she even backed up this statement by being married to a Police! Imagine that!! So we double teamed the opposition and beat them into submission that day. And as we laughed about it afterward we talked about other things too. A few days later I found her in the chats again and we talked some more, finding commonalities in tastes and humor, we discussed anything and everything that could possibly come up between two adults. The anonymity of the chat persona probably made us both bolder than we might normally be, but it became a regular thing that we would get together online and share the daily stories and the trials of our lives. She with her 2 kids and her awesomely cool, Policeman Husband, me with my big dreams and always trying to do something that I probably should but always manage to survive and thrive from. She was going to Paramedic school I was working nights in a factory, but while our worlds were a million miles apart, our minds were running parallel rails, we had tons to talk about and laugh about. She was cool out there in the Midwest, telling me about her great weather, while I was freezing my butt off here in western NY. She was looking out for Tornadoes while I was enjoying spring breezes. She was suffering through a drought while I was wishing it would stop raining. She went to school and raised her kids, I went to work and tried my hand at new things all the time, looking for my passion so that I could eventually pursue it for profit, and not feel trapped in a job I hated. Pretty soon I was planning a trip that could easily take me through her city, would it be okay if I stopped in and met her in person? Sure why not! So when the big day finally arrived, it was funny, after all the talking and discussion online, when we were actually together in the same room it took a little while for the words to start flowing the same as they did online. But eventually they did flow and the laughter and smiles came out free and easy, and I found out that I had met a person who was also just like me, but not me . I had me a second twin that made us triplets!!

So all of this leads me to this, Sometimes it is these odd friends that give us the most pleasure, even though it is rare that we get to actually see them, and we may go weeks and months with nary a word, but when we connect, we seem to fill in the blanks quickly and succinctly. Sometimes we stay in touch constantly, with big letters and awesome pictures and video. But it seems that these Odd friends are truly the best friends that we end up with, because we don't have the opportunities to screw it up, by getting drunk and doing something stupid and irredeemable, or borrowing money and never paying it back. There are a million things that break up friendships, but the Odd friends have some insulation from us and our wanton ways, and so they can last, and because they have been so much like us for so long it is pretty much a given that they will remain on our wavelength barring electro-shock therapy.

So heres to my Odd friends, some of my best friends in the world: Lynn, Renny, Mummy and Scotty. I love you guys and hope that you are my Odd Friends for many years to come!!