Post-Christmas Potpourri

            Post-Christmas Potpourri

                                                                       Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 27, 2015

            Leadership in Cobb.  It’s time for heads to cool.  Our Board of Commissioners must do everything within its power to deflate any further blow-ups from the Lisa Cupid/Cobb Police Department issue.

            Cobb County has too much to lose to allow personal miffs or even legitimate concerns to split the citizenry and send the county spiraling into the incivility and poor governance that marks some other counties in metro-Atlanta.

            We can argue about whose language was more intemperate, that of NAACP chairman Deanne Bonner who spoke of “pure war,” or that of Chairman Tim Lee who charged Commissioner Cupid with “seeking to create a media spectacle.”  One’s choice of words was as unfortunate as the other.

            For that matter, neither were the actions of Commissioner Cupid very wise when she set out to establish her own grievance committee to address police behavior.  Her Lone Ranger approach was provocative, advancing her cause not one whit.

            Commissioner Cupid, Ms. Bonner, and Chairman Lee need to get together.  But citizens need to understand what it’s like to live and work in the limelight.  Public officials must watch their words at every turn.  A single outburst is forgivable and should not be fatal for any leader.  From my observations, all three of these people are good leaders.  They stand on the shoulders of many other political and community leaders who have created an excellent county.  Anyone who doesn’t believe this needs to get outside of Cobb County more.

            Let’s hope that the New Year brings these three good people to the table with nothing in mind but to keep Cobb moving forward.  In fact, let’s watch carefully and see if one of them allows personal plans or wishes to be the beginning of a downward spiral for a great county.

            Ed Setzler and schools.  Rep. Ed Setzler of Acworth is on to something.  At a recent meeting of the Cobb Legislation Delegation, he spoke on behalf of constituents who are concerned about block scheduling, particularly as it pertains to math.

            Block scheduling is the name for longer class periods that meet fewer times a week for 90-120 minutes as opposed to traditional scheduling of daily 50-55 minute periods.  Block proponents argue that block scheduling provides more time for instruction since so much of a 50-55 minute period is spent each day on non-instructional things, even such as calling the roll.

            Opponents argue that expecting most teens to stay focused for an hour and a half is unrealistic.  Setzler’s concern was that the majority of students need a more drawn out pace for algebra and calculus than blocking allows.  His point about Walton, Lassiter, and Pope parents being successfully vocal against blocking is pertinent.  New Year’s prediction: the Board of Education will be hearing more from parents on the matter and will need to have a discussion of the advantages/disadvantages of block scheduling.

            Republican timidity, again.  Whenever Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer grins that grin and Senator Harry Reid’s erstwhile poker face manages a smile, you know they’ve won and Republicans have lost.  What’s sad is that Congressional Republicans are claiming Republicans won as well on the gigantic $1.1 trillion spending bill. 

            Good grief!  Congressional Republicans lost on everything, including the defunding of Planned Parenthood.  Republicans are simply unwilling to fight.  They are infected with partisanship, that Democrat shibboleth that is akin to “Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly.”  If Republicans cannot see what’s driving Donald Trump’s success, then forget unwilling; they’re blind, tone-deaf, and are absolutely ignoring their constituencies. 

2016 will most likely be the year when we know if the Republican Party will live or die.  Right now it appears the nation may be headed toward a multi-party system, the likes of which has never served Europe very well. Unfortunate, but when politicians and party big-wigs are unresponsive to the working stiffs that choose them, they should expect revolution sooner or later.

Parenting and politics: as goes the home …  Parenting or the lack thereof affects the affairs of every nation.  For good or ill, parents set the path for their offspring and for the culture at large.  Evidence abounds that either too many parents are not setting the right path or their offspring, when trained well, are simply choosing another path.  In “The Collapse of Parenting,” medical doctor Leonard Sax argues that America’s children are immersed in a culture of disrespect that touches every area of our society.

 Sax is right.  Andy Griffith is no longer the cultural diet.  Celebrities and the Internet are.  Politics, manners, and respect for others will improve only when parents improve first.  Sax says forget your child’s self-esteem and teach humility.

Perfectly good advice for a new year.

Roger Hines

12/23/15

Christmas Cheer without the Beer...Is It Possible?

                     Christmas Cheer Without the Beer … Is It Possible?

                                                                      Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 20, 2015

I know little to nothing about anything alcoholic.  For me, it is enough to observe what America’s intense love affair with alcohol has led to. 

            Three things have caused me to literally hate the thought of alcoholic drink.  One is my parents, simple people who never drank and who, without ranting, would speak warnings now and then of the “evils of strong drink.”  So sincere were they, so low-key and yet so convicted that drinking was wrong, that I simply chose to believe them.  Their quiet but occasional, loving warnings were persuasive.  From his father and only brother, my father saw what drinking could do to a family.

            To my parents, the words “drinking” and “divorce” were sorrowful. They didn’t like to mention or talk about either one.  During the 50s and early 60s when I was growing up, drinking and divorce were not prevalent, but they were beginning to be.  My parents were well aware of the trend.              The second influence, which bolstered my parents’ position, was a sister-in-law, a very special sister-in-law from Trieste, Italy.  Brought to the states by my older U.S. Army brother in the mid-50s, Antonia began to make comments about all the news stories on alcohol-related automobile accidents.  Those were the days of James Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause,” and drag racing was a Friday and Saturday night sport for many a rebel.  Somehow, even in dry Southern counties, teenage and twenty-something dragsters managed to get their beer and oftentimes hard liquor.  One can imagine what the mix of drinking and drag racing produced.

            My sister-in-law was puzzled and alarmed by America’s drinking habits.  A teetotaler (and from Europe?), she would shake her head.  In her broken English and accent that followed her to her grave, she once remarked, “A-med-i-cans no drink right.  They go crazy.  Italians no go crazy.”

            The third influence, and actually what sealed my opposition to alcohol, was becoming a high school and college teacher and hearing much too frequently about the deaths of students - my students -  brought on by alcohol. During my third year of teaching, two high school seniors were killed in car wrecks because of drinking, a girl and a boy, both good students whom I thought the world of.  My first thought was “I wonder if they learned drinking from their parents.”  Since then, nine students of mine have met death via alcohol’s path.  That’s not the total of all in the schools where I’ve taught, only those whom I’ve personally taught and knew well.

            Apparently the wimpy preachment, “Drink responsibly,” didn’t work for them.  Nor did that wobbly crutch, “designated driver.”  All eleven of these students were promising young people.  Most of them were seventeen, so I cannot lay all the blame on them.  They weren’t even old enough to vote.  I lay much of the blame on a culture that can’t seem to make do without its alcoholic beverages: can’t seem to have a good time, to find another way to get a buzz, to relax after work without that drink, or to acknowledge that drinking is still a dangerous initiatory rite for youth.

             My sister-in-law was correct.  Americans actually have gone crazy when it comes to drinking.  Gotta have it, whatever its cost in addiction, loss of productivity, or lives. No longer taboo in any corner of the nation, not even the Bible Belt, drinking is now pervasive.  According to Jay Reeves of the Associated Press, drinking is like gambling in that its acceptance in the South is a fait accompli. As for gambling, all but two Southern states, Alabama and Mississippi, have lotteries.  Perhaps there is a connect between this fact and the recent finding by the Pew Research Center that 19 percent of Southerners don’t identify with any organized religion.  Churches used to keep quite a few things at bay, but no more.

If Reeves and Pew are right, we could say that the Bible Belt has come unbuckled.  The only remaining taboo is to consider anything taboo.

Several years ago the Atlanta Public School superintendent was arrested for drunk driving on his way home from a social event.  Last year a good friend of mine, a leader in the Georgia General Assembly, was arrested for the same thing in the same context.  So it goes.  No wonder teens and college kids drink, even binge, and then kill with their vehicles.

In all things there is a more excellent way, a higher ground socially, morally, and practically.  Seems to me the highest, certainly the safest ground, is to leave alcoholic beverages alone. 

Christmas is a good time to think about it.

Roger Hines

12/16/15

Pronouns and Social Awareness or Playing Foolish with Grammar

                     Pronouns and Social Awareness or Playing Foolish with Grammar

                                                                      Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 13, 2015

  Today’s lesson is on pronouns.  It’s all about how colleges and universities are using grammar to achieve a particular social goal.  Warning to taxpayers: you might get angry.

            It’s also a lesson about the extremes to which academia is going in order to be sensitive.  I for one have just about had it with sensitive.  Why aren’t educational institutions content to teach things that are needed?   Things like mathematics and science that put us on the moon, gave us a high standard of living, and alleviated much human suffering.       

            Yes, pronouns are being abused and even put to death in order to advance a social agenda. 

            Let’s start with a few questions.  If you are female, are you bothered by the expression, “To each his own”?  How about the word “freshman”?  Do you fault the psalmist for writing, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” even though you know he was referring to the human species and not just to males?  How about the happy exclamation, “Man alive!”? 

            If you’re a male, has it bothered you that countries have always been referred to in the feminine gender, or that Lady Liberty, not a Mr. Liberty, stands tall on Ellis Island?

            You may not be bothered, but many colleges are.   In fact a growing number of college students and their enabling professors have begun to insist upon PGPs.  That’s preferred gender pronouns. 

“Huh?” you say.  So did I a few months back when I first learned about this.

            My range of emotions went from laughter to despair.  Laughter because I thought it was one more innocent college caper.  Despair because I soon learned that it wasn’t.

            No, colleges hither and yon – mostly yon from where I live – are announcing that, as a matter of policy, they will begin to ask students at registration which gender pronoun they prefer.  The purpose of this laughable practice is to “make our campus welcoming and inclusive for all.”  Or at least those are the words of the director of the Pride Center at the University of Tennessee.  (UT?  That’s just up I-75 apiece from where I’m sitting and typing.  That’s not yon; that’s hither.)

            Other institutions of so-called higher learning are also in on the act.  Little but prestigious Cornell College of Mount Vernon, Iowa ( Iowa?) puts their policy this way: “A preferred gender pronoun is a consciously chosen set of pronouns that allow students to accurately represent their gender identity in a way that is comfortable for them.”

            All the fuss, of course, is in the interest of “the fluidity of sexuality.”  If one is transgender, or is simply male or female but prefers “no pronouns,” then professors will know not to say Mr., Mrs., or Ms. when calling the roll.

            Of course Harvard is in on this kick.  So are the University of Wisconsin, the University of Vermont, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and many other institutions of higher sensitivity. Some of these institutions have been told by students that they prefer “shem” to “she” or “him,” again out of deep respect and concern for all students who don’t want to be “captive to gender.”

            People, the world is in strife, our nation is in an emotional slump, and we’re getting this kind of drivel from academia.  Besides, what’s an old English teacher like me to do?  For years I’ve taught that pronouns, like prepositions and conjunctions, are a closed class of words, a snooty bunch that, unlike nouns and verbs, does not admit new members.  I shall wait and see if the pronoun family admits these concocted new pronouns, but given the power of the homosexual and transgender lobby and the way academia fawns over them, I suspect we will soon see dictionaries with some new pronouns.

            There’s good news, though.  When the Tennessee legislature heard about the UT Pride Center’s policy and made noise about it, UT’s president removed the policy.

            Good for him. He has inspired me to make a bumper sticker that reads, “Keep your hands off my pronouns.”

            Now, if only some other state legislatures will get tough as well and ward off such foolishness.  Otherwise, “sensitivity” will continue to lead us to even more denial of reality.

            Incidentally, there’s a new book out that undergirds the foolishness, the movement’s manifesto, if you will.  Melvin Konner, anthropology professor at Emory University, has produced “Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy.”  The blurb of the book states that Konner “explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race.”

            I simply don’t know what else to say.

Roger Hines

12/9/15

Ich bin ein Richt supporter

                          Ich bin ein Richt supporter

                                                                           Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 6, 2015

            Hey, ya’ll, I’ve had my picture made with him, too.  But so did every other member of the Georgia House of Representative’s Retirement Committee.  Yessir, University of Georgia Coach Mark Richt appeared before the committee to argue for a retirement plan for assistant coaches throughout the state, not just for those at UGA.

            The year was 2003, so the young coach was still fairly new to Georgia.  I was impressed by his concern for his lieutenants.  For the hour or so he spent with the committee, plus the extra half- hour the committee members spent fawning over him and taking pictures, Richt appeared untouched by all of the attention.  In fact, he seemed uncomfortable with his celebrity. 

            Unassuming, unfazed, with not an ounce of  self-importance, the coach eloquently stated his case to the Retirement Committee and then kindly tolerated our fawning.

            I love the guy.  But since football is the tail that wags the dog of so called higher education (“Higher than what?” columnist George Will is now asking.), and since Richt is a $4 million plus man, his boss has a right to expect $4 million results and to delineate what those results are to be.

            But so do bill-footing taxpayers who believe college football has become the be-all and end-all of college life.  Even if college athletic budgets contribute to non-athletic, academic departments, the average college student probably doesn’t know it.  He or she only knows that from the office of the college president on down the line, the football program is the supreme value.

            It’s all a male thing, of course, and it’s casting a shadow over intellectual pursuits … you know, the pursuit of learning and human advancement, of research, history, law, language, science, the arts, mathematics, and all of those other old-fashioned subjects that most certainly did excite college students back in the day.  Back when football didn’t wag education, when five months of the school year were not spent anticipating the weekend game, playing it, and then arguing about it until Tuesday.

One reason I admire Coach Richt is that from all accounts he has sought to raise up men, not just football players. He loves the game for what it can produce, which when taught properly, can produce men.  He hasn’t leaned toward the legendary Bear Bryant whose fabled remark was “My players are athletes first and students second.” 

And for that he paid a price, unfairly so.  A 145-51 record isn’t good enough?  How many other great coaches produced a national champion within 15 years as Richt was expected to do?  Bear Bryant didn’t; it took him 17.  Tom Osborne didn’t; he needed 22.  Joe Paterno, like Bryant, took 17. Lou Holtz labored 19 years for the dream, and Bobby Bowden, Richt’s mentor, took 18 years.

But that was then and this is now.  Longfellow’s line, “Learn to labor and to wait,” isn’t good enough for today’s athletic directors.  Or fans or alumni.  Instant gratification infected all of us some time ago.

While a coach’s boss has the right to fire him, exercising that right isn’t necessarily the wise or right thing to do.  The boss man may have been responding in part to those who think Richt didn’t snort and stomp and wave his arms enough on the sidelines.  But very few of the nation’s greatest coaches have conducted themselves in that manner.  

I have often faulted Richt for his leniency with his athletes’ off campus conduct.  Too often he was too forgiving.  But his record remains, the testimony of his athletes is compelling, and his commitment to coaching and winning is unquestionable.  By the time of this writing, Coach Richt may have made a decision about his future.  Whatever that decision is, I only hope that at some college, some day, some more young men can be around him and learn about character.  Fundraising and glad-handing for UGA will not make this man happy.  He’s a coach.  As a classroom teacher, I owe much to so many coaches like him.

On June 26 of 1963 in West Berlin, President John Kennedy uttered what is probably his second most memorable sentence.  Aiming his words at the Soviets who were responsible for the divided city, Kennedy declared in German, “I am a Berliner.”  Though the dividing wall didn’t come down for a quarter century, the initial step was taken.

Citizens who believe coaches should still build men as well as win trophies need to assert, “Ich bin ein Richt supporter,” thereby declaring that if college football is not supposed to educate and grow men, it doesn’t belong in an educational institution.

Dinosaur thinking, I know.  But what a need exists for it.

Roger Hines

12/2/15