Knuckles Down

Thought For The Day

I was thinking about sports.

When I was a boy the first competitive activity that I can recall is marbles. That was real competition since losing meant giving up your marbles. That was a horrible idea and why many games were prefaced with the comments,  "Playing for fun. or Playing for keeps." . You learn a good deal about your opponents in competition. It is often where cheating emerges as a real concept in one's life. Rules and who makes them is also a part of this learning opportunity and the fine art of cheating or misleading.

Knuckles down, plunking, histing and lagging - all terms that set conditions for the game. It could have been the training ground for lawyers, surgeons, salesmen and entrepreneurs. There is no place like a playground and no commodity like a pocket full of marbles to teach caution, fear, greed, strategy and intimidation.

When I watch my grandchildren play with their friends marbles is rarely an activity I encounter. One of the reasons marbles was a good training ground was it's lack of adult supervision. That kind of activity brings out the more natural state of humans. In the "kids only" arena, size, strength, intelligence, knowledge, manipulation and guile surface rather quickly and the commodity is seized by those who accumulate and handle those characteristics the best.

Do kids play marbles these days? I don't think I have seen a game of marbles for many years. What I do see is a bunch of very well managed children, supported by parents and grandparents wearing uniforms and equipment that only existed for the professionals when I was a kid.  And, they get trophys for just showing up. They get snacks and drinks served by their parents and the cost of these activities is amazing.

I don't remember what a bag of marbles cost and it's irrelevant anyway. The point is marbles was  a bit like a board room conference or a strategy meeting or sales presentation. I'm not sure how I would compare today's youth activities with business, but entitled, selfish, greedy and lazy  are adjectives that come to mind.

There are lots of reasons why we are in this state of affairs that isn't working out very well, but it just doesn't seem like anyone is willing to say, "Knuckles down!"

©Herb Ratliff, May 30, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Life's a Beach

Thought For The Day

When we moved from Michigan to Florida the differences were pretty extreme. We lived only a couple of miles from the ocean and we all enjoyed the water so when we had the time we would go to the beach.

Lake Worth was a smallish town that was an outcropping of West Palm Beach. There were and still are a lot of small towns that exist along the coast of Florida, but Lake Worth was where we lived. We moved there in the summer and summer in Florida is a different animal. The heat is overwhelming and staying inside with the air conditioning is like being in jail. So, we went to the beach, a lot.

One blistering summer afternoon we sat on the beach with the children playing in the sand and near the edge of the water. Lindsay, my youngest daughter was deeply engaged in a project that appeared to be an attempt to move all of the sand on the beach from one place to another. She was close by and offered shovels, rakes and other excavation equipment to me when she was not using it.

The heat and the sun created a lazy, lethargic mood, almost a dreamlike state of mind. So when my baby girl, who was about three stood straight up and began running toward the water I was surprised and looked toward the edge of the water to see what had captured her attention. There, walking along the edge of the water as if on a runway in Paris were mother and daughter in crocheted lace like bikini's, the picture of elegance. They were both blond and walked with a practiced grace that was was at once alluring and endearing; too much so as it turned out to suit my clever, and very feminine daughter.

At first her interest was sweet, I thought, as she sped toward the pair, but as she gathered speed I began to doubt the humanity in her intent. It was too late. She took the little girl out with a full body tackle. The woman who was with her stood in absolute bewilderment at this animalistic attack.

Lindsay, my sweet little daughter looked completely satisfied, hands on her hips, sand on her face with a "so there, miss fancy pants" look on her face. And I thought as I looked at this amazing situation that women become women at a very early age.

©Herb Ratliff, May 28, 2012, All Rights Reserved

To Be Superior

Mike Pohlman and me

It was the sixties: sit ins, free love, Viet Nam, The Beatles, Kennedy, civil rights, communes and real change.

I got an email from an old friend, a very literate and learned man who has read myriad books, traveled the world, penned and published a couple of books, earned a Master's Degree and taught children about the magic of reading. It was he more than anyone else who encouraged me to read and ultimately to write.

We joined a book club in the eighth grade and met authors  like Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clark. Mike would give book reports that would hold the class captive and the teacher would have to tell him to sit down because he could have gone on the whole hour and we would have loved it. We spent all of our junior and senior high school years together. Then college split us up and finally a break in college for me put me back in Saginaw for a while and Mike and I reconnected. Then, marriages and jobs split us up again, but only temporarily.

We exchanged letters (they were in envelopes and bore stamps issued by the United States Postal Service) at one point of our lives, great quantities of words and ideas about life, love and politics. We did this while we were young and just piercing the membrane of the insular sac of our own dreams and ambitions. Some of the letters were dark with stormy visions of the inhumanity of man to his fellows, some were superior and filled with disdain for the common folk around us. There were things to do, children to create, houses to build and ambitions to nurture into reality. Compromise was for the weak and malleable who bathed in their own uncertainty. We knew what was right and made covenants to lead man to a higher plane.

The email today used words that had a different flavor. There was a sentence that lit up like a flashing neon sign from a film noir. "You are disgracefully sentimental by the way. That's not bad. Just true."
I looked at the sentence for a long time. I wanted to make sure I knew how I felt about it. Then, after carefully considering the words and the source I decided that I quite liked it. Guilty, as charged.
©Herb Ratliff, May 12, 2012

My friend and I used to read a poem aloud by D. H. Lawrence called,

To Be Superior.

How nice it is to be superior!
Because, really, it's no use pretending, one really is superior, isn't one?
I mean people like you and me.

Quite! I quite agree.
The trouble is, everybody thinks they're just as superior
as we are; just as superior.

That's what's so boring! people are so boring.
But they can't really think it, do you think?
At the bottom, they must know we are really superior
don't you think?
don't you think, really, they know we're their superiors?

I couldn't say.
I've never got to the bottom of superiority.
I should like to.



Herb Ratliff, May 25, 2012

Daybreak

Daybreak,

a red-tailed hawk captures a cottontail,

Eggs Benedict on the raptor menu.

Life is good, hope echoes her promise

and now it is up to me to live free.

Aho!

©Herb Ratliff, May24, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Daddy's Little Girl

War Bird

Julie Ratliff Kingsley, my daughter, celebrated her birthday on the eighth of May. To put an exclamation point behind her 40th birthday she competed in the Warrior Dash, a 5K wall climbing, mud slinging, swimming, running, jumping race that made it clear she is just getting warmed up.

Congratulations Julie. 

She finished 31st in her age group, 40 - 49, out of a field of 457, and 252 overall from a field of 2887 with a time of 35:11.30 . Makes me tired just to type it.

Touched

* Note to the reader.

Touched

A glass of wine, Rhine, you said.

Bright eyes flitting here and there but,

finding an oasis in mine.

They stopped and looked more deeply, then

you touched me and waited to be touched.

The clamor wrapped us like a blanket.

I smiled. (Sometimes noise can be a friend.)

Linen, silver and Henry brought dinner.

We talked of Ardrey, Leaky and Eisley,

acquiesced our boundaries and turned

our separate spaces into one we shared, 

for a moment.

You wanted to walk and drink in the cool 

November night. We shared my coat.

Arm in arm like some caped apparition

we laughed along the street, clinging to the moment

and looking for a place to embrace.

Dance? I asked, and then like an island in the stream,

we embraced in the middle of madness.

Morning found me alone, fondling a tiny, golden ear ring.

I stared into it's glow and recalled the fire from embers.

©Herb Ratliff, March 16, 1978, All Rights Reserved

* Note to the readers:
Although there is a school who believe poetry stands on it's own legs or not at all, I want to say a few words about this poem's origin. I wrote it several years ago after a friend challenged me to write a poem for The New Yorker. I never submitted it so I could be certain it would be accepted. I have seen many that are no better and a lot more that are not as good. HBR

Education: A New Look

Thought For The Day

An unconventional approach to education

"In 1999 the Indian physicist Sugata Mitra got interested in education. He knew there were places in the world without schools and places in the world where good teachers didn't want to teach. What could be done for kids living in those spots was his question. Self-directed learning was one pos­sible solution, but were kids living in slums capable of all that much self-direction?

  

"At the time, Mitra was head of research and development for NIIT Technologies, a top computer software and development company in New Delhi, India. His posh twenty-first-century office abutted an urban slum but was kept separate by a tall brick wall. So Mitra designed a simple exper­iment. He cut a hole in the wall and installed a computer and a track pad, with the screen and the pad facing into the slum. He did it in such a way that theft was not a problem, then connected the computer to the Internet, added a web browser, and walked away.

  

"The kids who lived in the slums could not speak English, did not know how to use a computer, and had no knowledge of the Internet, but they were curious. Within minutes, they'd figured out how to point and click. By the end of the first day, they were surfing the web and-even more importantly-teaching one another how to surf the web. These results raised more questions than they answered. Were they real? Did these kids really teach themselves how to use this computer, or did someone, perhaps out of sight of Mitra's hidden video camera, explain the technology to them?

  

"So Mitra moved the experiment to the slums of Shivpuri, where, as he says, 'I'd been assured no one had ever taught anybody anything.' He got similar results. Then he moved it to a rural village and found the same thing. Since then, this experiment has been replicated all over India, and all over the world, and always with the same outcome: kids, working in small, unsupervised groups, and without any formal training, could learn to use computers very quickly and with a great degree of proficiency.

  

"This led Mitra to an ever-expanding series of experiments about what else kids could learn on their own. One of the more ambitious of these was conducted in the small village of Kalikkuppam in southern India. This time Mitra decided to see if a bunch of impoverished Tamil-speaking, twelve-year-olds could learn to use the Internet, which they'd never seen before; to teach themselves biotechnology, a subject they'd never heard of; in English, a language none of them spoke. 'All I did was tell them that there was some very difficult information on this computer, they probably wouldn't under­stand any of it, and I'll be back to test them on it in a few months.'

  

"Two months later, he returned and asked the students if they'd under­stood the material. A young girl raised her hand. 'Other than the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease,' she said, 'we've understood nothing.' In fact, this was not quite the case. When Mitra tested them, scores averaged around 30 percent. From 0 percent to 30 percent in two months with no formal instruction was a fairly remark­able result, but still not good enough to pass a standard exam. So Mitra brought in help. He recruited a slightly older girl from the village to serve as a tutor. She didn't know any biotechnology, but was told to use the 'grand­mother method': just stand behind the kids and provide encouragement. 'Wow, that's cool, that's fantastic, show me something else!' Two months later, Mitra came back. This time, when tested, average scores had jumped to 50 percent, which was the same average as high-school kids studying bio-tech at the best schools in New Delhi.

  

"Next Mitra started refining the method. He began installing computer terminals in schools. Rather than giving students a broad subject to learn-for example, biotechnology-he started asking directed questions such as 'Was World War II good or bad?' The students could use every available resource to answer the question, but schools were asked to restrict the num­ber of Internet portals to one per every four students because, as Matt Rid­ley wrote in the Wall Street Journal, 'one child in front of a computer learns little; four discussing and debating learn a lot.' When they were tested on the subject matter afterward (without use of the computer), the mean score was 76 percent. That's pretty impressive on its own, but the question arose as to the real depth of learning. So Mitra came back two months later, retested the students, and got the exact same results. This wasn't just deep learning, this was an unprecedented retention of information. ...

"Taken together, this work reverses a bevy of educational practices. Instead of top-down instruction, [these 'self-organized learning environments'] are bottom up. Instead of making students learn on their own, this work is collaborative. Instead of a formal in-school setting for instruction, the Hole-in-the-Wall method relies on a playground-like environment. Most importantly, minimally invasive edu­cation doesn't require teachers. Currently there's a projected global short­age of 18 million teachers over the next decade."

Author: Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Title: Abundance
Publisher: Free Press
Date: Copyright 2012 by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Pages: 174-176

New Eyes

Thought For The Day

What is treacherous is not so much what happens as how well prepared you are for it. Life happens at the speed of light and getting ready for it is what you spend your life doing.

Life has a way of lulling you into a kind of blase attitude, convincing you that your life has little meaning, no excitement, not much in the way of prospects for the future. Then, in the midst of your complaints of being a public service announcement something happens in your life to shake the very earth you stand on. It could be receiving a large amount of money, an injury or a hidden condition found in you that calls for some serious decisions but, whatever the event, it gives you a new perspective, a new set of eyes. 

Now, the mundane, predictable acts of living performed by you and those around you take on a whole new meaning. If you are serving your country in the armed forces there are conditions that threaten you every moment of the day and night. There is no safe place and you must be alert at all times. If you are going to work, shopping for groceries, directing a merger or performing surgery there are trip points and land mines at every step. We have just become desensitized to them. When one of those moments wakes us from our walking sleep, we are surprised. 

This is your moment, your fifteen minutes of fame, your day, your life. Live it with new eyes every day. Don't quit before the miracle!

©Herb Ratliff, May 14, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Be Right Back

Thought For the Day

If you are unemployed because of circumstances beyond your control, refer to it as a much needed sabbatical for research. It will titillate your audience with considerations of your importance and make you feel a bit better while doing no harm.

Herb Ratliff, May 10, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Morning Mayflies

Thought For The Day

First you breath out and look across as much of the river as possible. Then, go from wide angle to a tighter focus of just the area the light shines on. It looks a bit like a path toward the sun. As your eyes relax and your body loses its tension you begin to notice the insect life in, above and beyond the water. Much of the insect life is very small, seemingly too small to be important. Then, the aerial denizens make their presence known with in flight captures of the wee beasties.

As you grasp the biosphere more clearly the clockworks precision becomes apparent and then you see the mayflies as they rise and drop, rise and drop, then fall to the surface on the gentle current of the river. Then, without remark nothing but a dimpled concentric ring. As sure as coffee in the morning the baetis have arrived, tiny blue winged olive mayflies, a staple of the watchful trout.

A 6x tippet, fisherman's knot, a tug to tighten and the early looks, fore and aft before the back-cast, then the soft uncurling ess and a feather drop on the surface. Let the games begin my friends.

©Herb Ratliff, May 9, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Thanks For The Memories

Happy Birthday Julie

You Look Marvelous!

You Can't Be Serious

Thought For The Day

I suppose everyone has a story about religion. Some of the memories have deep meaning and great impact on our character, others are markers of changes in attitude and growth. My story has a little of both.because it is about something that happened when I was nine.

I did not grow up in a home where religious heritage had laid a path to follow. I do not know what religion was practiced in the homes of my grandparents, aunts and uncles. I did not attend a parochial school. I do remember attending a number of different churches and being required to sit quietly with my parents for church services that involved loud men making threats about the safety of my soul if I were not "saved". To say that church was not a destination I favored is a bit of an understatement. I dreaded Sunday in those days and was a reluctant participant. That all changed when the missionaries came to visit.

When the missionaries came to school my parents in the tenets of the new church they were investigating the whole picture of religion began to change. This was the introduction of growth, education, community, friendship and possibilities. While the threat aspect remained, it was muted in favor of the more positive attributes of new horizons and community.

After a fairly long investigation my mother decided this was the kind of lifestyle change that she deemed correct for the family. My father was less convinced and withheld approval and participation until further review. Since I was of sufficient age to be considered for baptism by immersion, that event was set as a goal to be accomplished as soon as possible.

Immersion was a word with which I was unfamiliar and so I questioned those around me for an explanation and was told that baptism was accomplished by standing in a large bathtub like tank and put under the water by an elder, all of me, the whole enchilada. Naturally, this did not meet with my immediate approval and since I had no real authority to argue the point I began to stew and ruminate about the event until I was so twisted up in my knickers that I could scarcely sleep. The largest part of the problem centered on the fact that I believed since this was an event which mirrored a bath I would necessarily be without raiment, clothing for those of you who don't remember Sunday school words. And, the idea that I was to be nude and watched by the entire congregation put me in a terrible state.

The terror did not subside until I was given the white clothing which was to be worn for the baptism. Just another example of the little things that make a big difference in the lives of children. But, I must tell you that the relief I felt when those clothes were handed to me is beyond description.

Herb Ratliff, May 7, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Throwing Rocks

Thought For The Day

In the unconventional life of the kid there are many traps for tunnel vision moments. The is nothing beyond the challenge, nothing beyond the dare, only the excitement of the competition and the possibility of the win.

Living in a 1950's neighborhood in Saginaw, Michigan offered many perks, not the least of which was the possibility of walking over to a friends house after school. Subdivisions were something in the future, busing was minimal so bikes, walking and on rare occasions drop offs were the norm. This meant that after school the possibility existed for a visit to a friend's. So on one such opportunity I was invited to go to Mike Pohlman's house after school and that is what I did. As a matter of fact there were three of us who made that walk, Mike, Gordon Cann and me. I am reasonably sure that we were in the seventh grade, twelve years old.

Walking over to visit a friend is always an adventure and when there are three there is an inevitable built in challenge match of things to stretch the limits of good taste. That's what twelve year old boys do. A lot of the matches are bluff and empty bravado but if you can convince others that you would do something it is almost as good as the deed itself, better if you consider the consequences.

Our final challenge match occurred right at the driveway of Mike's house. We had been bragging about our great skills the whole way home and now that we were there something had to happen so Mike said that there was no way way anyone could hit the flood light on the garage at the end of the driveway. He said that we each could use three throws and that we should each select three rocks compatible with the event. That done we stepped to the marked line on the sidewalk and prepared for the games.

Each of us made our initial toss and were unsuccessful. Now began the trash talk, prelude to adrenaline psychosis and the second round of throws, no Kewpie Doll. Now began the disclaimers: It's too far, No one could do that, This is ridiculous and when the pressure was reduced the accuracy improved and the target got bigger and the rocks got closer and when I made the last throw, I hit it squarely in the center and smashed it to smithereens much to the chagrin of Mike, Gordon and me. Now what?

There were angry parents to deal with, repair costs to consider, restricted activity was introduced, no more kids over after school, it was awful. Some things never change.

Herb Ratliff, May 4, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Great Moments

Thought For The Day

Jim and Carole Carroll

Some of the greatest moments in life are impromptu events, kisses from the universe, life putting you in the spotlight without warning. One such event occurred one weekday evening in the mid nineteen seventies. It began with a phone call from my friend,  Jim Carroll. He had been given tickets to go to a concert in Detroit. Would we be interested in going with he and his wife Carole?

We had two lovely children and no family close by to cover such quick invitations but we checked with our best sitters and found the kids favorite would be available if we were not going to be too late.  The scurrying began. I left the office early and went home to help get things ready. Jim and Carole lived in Saginaw, we were in Flint and the Concert was in Detroit about seventy miles away. At the time that was a lot farther away than it seems now.

We got things ready for the sitter, fed the kids, got dressed for the concert, the Carroll's picked us up and away we went.

It might be helpful to know that I am a very big fan of the piano. And this concert was being performed by none other than Van Cliburn, youngest and only American winner at the time of the Russian International Tchaikovsky Competition at the age of twenty three at the height of the Cold War. I was over the top with anticipation.

We had front row seats. Seeing someone perform who is the best at what they do is an indescribable experience. He played Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff .  That was the same piece he had played to win in Moscow.  I have been to a reasonable number of concerts both popular and classical music and seen some remarkable performances but there is nothing that has ever approached the experience I had that particular night. I haven't even told you about the most interesting part of this event.

After the concert was over, Jim went over to thank Dr Freiling (that's a guess at the name.), his friend who had provided the tickets. When he came back he seemed rather animated and asked if we could go over to their house for a drink. We conferred for a bit, found a phone and checked with the sitter and agreed to go.

Their home was amazing. It was in Royal Oak, an area of Detroit that had many classical homes and estates and was five stories. Each story had musical instruments showcased. The first floor had clavichord, harpsichord and grand piano along with lutes and lyres. It turned out that, and I may have this turned around, that Mrs. Freiling was the president of the Founders Society and that was how the tickets had become available.

We moved from the tour to a lovely garden like room with a full bar and hors d'oeuvres. There were but a handful of people in this gigantic house and I knew a few of them from work. While it was lovely to see the house and museum like display of musical instruments I was beginning to feel uneasy about the time and the sitter and getting home. I leaned over to Jim and said that we should probably be considering taking our leave. It was then that he told me there was to be a complete sit down dinner. I was flabbergasted and about to make my excuses for leaving when I noticed a flurry of activity moving toward the room. I looked more closely and to my amazement the entourage was made up by John Cavelli, conductor of the Flint Symphony and his wife, a gaggle of roadies and none other than Van Cliburn and his mother.

When we were seated Van Cliburn was on my right and his mother on my left. I felt like royalty, What great fun. Thanks Jim and Carole

Herb Ratliff, May 1, 2012, All Rights Reserved