Digging for Happiness

"Be thankful."

It's good advice. I guess it implies indebtedness to some benevolent universal presence, but I hear complete atheists saying that they are thankful, too. It's still valid for them. "Glad" is a good substitute word: "I'm glad I have such a great life."

Sometimes, we use the idea of being thankful as an argument that we have no right to ever complain. It's like the old mom thing, when a kid won't eat his Lima beans: "You should be thankful you have Lima beans. There are starving children who would love to have Lima beans."

Of course, this doesn't work. First of all, it just doesn't work, psychologically. Second, I don't even think starving kids would eat Lima beans.

Van Gogh

In life, we try to use the mom argument: How can I complain when I have a bad day at work? There are people with no jobs... That kind of thing. Usually, we all know, it doesn't work.

Tricorns, Flaming Tractor Trailers and Voyages in Muddy Puddles

We just returned from trip to Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia. For those of you outside of the US, the place consists of a "triangle" of historically significant sites, including Williamsburg itself, which was an instrumental city during the American Revolution; Yorktown, which is the location of the battlefield on which Cornwallis surrendered to Washington (or, rather, sent an underling to surrender to Washington, in order to make a point of honor) and Jamestown, the location of the first permanent British settlement and stomping grounds of John Smith and Pocahontas. (She never married him, by the way; she married John Rolfe.)

An evening at the Raleigh Tavern

Anyway, as I was there -- and not writing -- my mind was full of I-should-blog-about-thats. And now you shall pay the price.

It took us five hours to get there, headed south on many southerly roads, but, having left at three am to avoid the ridiculous (nay, offensively busy traffic) in the Washington, DC area, we arrived in Williamsburg by nine am. We were tired, but excited to be there.

Since we could not check-in to our hotel until four in the afternoon, we had a good deal of time to walk around Williamsburg, among the costumed re-creators and the visitors. The foot traffic was light and the town really is a lovely time machine (except that, since the last time I visited, some fifteen years ago, they black-topped the main road, Duke of Gloucester Street. It was a shame to see and it was a shame not to hear gravel anymore under people's feet. And it is ugly and jarring, as you can see in the picture.

The Truth Isn't Always Original

One of the biggest clashes of all time is the one between parents and non-parents. Non-parents hate that parents hound them about the wonders of parenthood and that those same parents "push" non-parents to have kids in order to find fulfillment in their lives. Parents get offended by non-parents who laud their freedom in not having children and they laugh at the non-parents when they complain about being "busy." It is a never-ending war.

More kids at work.

Sometimes, I feel conscious of this when I write about parenthood. I almost feel like it is offensive to non-parents to say when things are good in Dadland. Being a parent is not the life for everyone, and I can see why people choose not to be parents, especially when things are going roughly -- and, believe me, they do, sometimes. In fact, I think that more people should choose not to be parents. There's nothing worse than having kids because one feels one has to. It makes for bad results.

In short, I respect those who choose not to be parents.

Complaints of a Nobody

I am currently reading a masterpiece: Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. The other night, while reading, I was compelled to post this to Facebook:

"From her temperate veranda she now saw only void where the valley used to be--a gray, smoky void into which she peered, hunting distance and relief from the mirage of mountains that quivered around her with visible heat. The wind that breathed past her and moved the banal bright geraniums in their pots brought a phantasmal sound of bells, and expired again, tired as a sigh." -- Wallace Stegner, from Angle of Repose. (And people read Twilight.)

So, okay. Maybe it is a little stuffy of me to say that. But it is frustrating to see people like, say, Dan Brown (and the Twilight writer, whose name I can't think of and refuse to look up) making a fortune with the writing skills of a sixth grader. 

I know that, in the end, it is not the prose that your average reader is interested in, but, are they even aware of prose like Stegner's? If they were, would they still be able to tolerate Dan Brown, or Twilight?

American Ninja Education: Education Lessons from American Ninja Warrior

The American educational system ought to take a lesson from American Ninja Warrior.

Ever see it? It is a contest that originated as a show in Japan. Basically, the ultimate goal it to complete the world's most difficult obstacle course. Here is a run from the qualifying round. Most people don't finish the course, at all:


As I said, this is only the qualifying round. The key point here is that the athletes who try this course have never seen some of the obstacles they are going to face -- the developers of the contest surprise them with new obstacles ever year.