Something Requisitely Witty and Urbane

Most of all, I'll remember the laughter

Shake's Sis brings it to my attention, but Scott McClellan has been MIA for over two weeks. Possibly on his way out.

The Outsiders

Say what you will about Nora Ephron, but there's no denying she's a great writer:

I can’t believe that it falls to me to explain Bob Woodward. I can’t believe it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t speak to Bob Woodward and Bob Woodward doesn’t speak to me. The reason for this is that when I was married to Carl Bernstein, Woodward’s former partner, Carl wasn’t speaking to Bob, so out of loyalty I wasn’t speaking to Bob either. Then Carl and I split up and I found myself in the odd position of not speaking to one person out of loyalty to a second person I also wasn’t speaking to. Then Carl and Bob became friends again, but I continue not to speak to Bob and vice versa.

The whole thing is genius.

It's not the first time I've pointed it out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a faction of the Right Wing (of which a large number currently reside in the White House) who really don't think that torture is that bad an idea... quite the opposite in fact.  We've gone from "It's just a few bad apples" Abu Gharib talk to, "I'm not going to comment on any individual techniques..."

This Newsmax article takes it to the next step, as it attempts to use John McCain's own words about his experience being tortured as a POW as a pro-torture argument:

And - as McCain has publicly admitted at least twice - the torture worked!

[...]

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number."

There it is! The proof!  Torture works! 

Putting aside the gross mischarachterization of McCain's words, the quotes that Newsmax uses are as good an argument against torture as it is for torture.  McCain feels badly that he gave up any information at all, but the information he gave was, in fact, not useful.

It's a testament to how far the goalposts have been moved on this issue that, "We're against torture because it is beneath us and beneath our values," isn't the only point necessary, but the most common, "The intelligence isn't reliable," defense gets more headway.

So, when we have guys like the morons at Newsmax taking John McCain (one of the few people in American public life to really know the realities of torture, who then crafted some of the most strongly worded -- if ineffective -- anti-torture legislation, ever), and then twisting his words in an awkward justification for the continued degradation of our moral fiber, it provides a stunning insight that there really are Two Americas.

In one of them, torture is accepted.

I need some help.

The Supreme Court is hearing a case regarding abortion and parental notification for minors today.  The idea that a parent, except for extraordinary circumstances (as determined by a judge), should be required to be a part of any medical procedure their children undergo (which they are for any other medical procedure besides this one) doesn't seem all that extraordinary to me.

Someone explain to me why this is not ok.

It's pretty much died down, but in the absence of blogging, my traffic has been kept afloat by this tiny little post I wrote about Aaron Brown's departure from CNN, on November 2nd. 

I've received hundreds of hits from search engines about Aaron Brown, as well as daily comments since the day I wrote the post, by people who are sad to see him go.

And the comments are like eulogies, almost as if there is a feeling that they are writing to Aaron Brown himself.  Here's a couple of samples:

Everynight, my husband and I tuned into New Night and Aaron Brown. I thought Aaron was one of the best Anchors in the past 10 years.

-----

From here it looks like blatant age descrimination that they are trying to make more palatable with a lame attempt at giving it a candy coating. They say there wasn't room for them both? Stuff 'n nonsense!

-----

Thanks for four years of great news coverage.
I loved your "weather reports".
Good luck Aaron!

-----

Aaron Brown was both COMFORTING and REASSURING during Hurricane Katrina, ...(when we first began listening to CNN over FOX), .......BUT YOU HAVE TAKEN THAT AWAY and given us a younger, emotional reporter who doesn't carry the same 'weight', ...we feel SAD like we LOST SOMEONE VERY DEAR, much like Lou Dobbs! DON'T TOUCH HIM!!!!!

It has amazed me, first of all that this blog became a forum for this, but the depth of emotion people felt about Aaron Brown.

I personally liked Aaron Brown a lot.  Much of it had to do with 9/11.  It was just one of the many very human story lines found within that day, but Brown, finally receiving an major, national anchor job mere days before the worst tragedy in American History occurred, and he had to cover it from a balcony in front of smoking and smoldering buildings.  You could just see it in his eyes: This was the time he had waited his whole life for, and now he had to cover it while watching his fellow New Yorkers die around him.

If there is this sort of outpouring of sentiment about his dismissal from CNN, then there has to be some network executive who realizes that hiring Brown will be taping into a waiting audience (CBS, I'm talking to you).

(Note: I've been a horrible blogger for the past few weeks, and then I've tried to ease my way back in, but to no avail.  There is something about reading all the current events plotlines, topics of conversation and notes of interest while not entirely allowing yourself to engage them fully that makes a blogger feel a bit guilty pretending to purport some knowledge or special insight into them.  Hopefully, this post, which is an important one, will also serve as a palate cleanser to more regular blogging.  Thanks for being patient).

For those new to the blog, there was a series of posts previous to this one which detailed my work history up to the present.  I'm skipping one job to talk about my current one, as a small but important chapter in my life is just about to close.

Most readers know (though gory tales have been slower in coming over the past 6 months) that I work at an upscale steakhouse, and have for almost 5 years.  A little less than a year and a half ago, I moved up into management at the restaurant (though I still waited tables too).  I've been managing during the entire life of this blog (in fact, my 3rd post on my fledgling blog, in July of 2004 mentioned the possibility).  The point is, for the entire time that you all have known me, I've been in management.

I began managing for lots of reasons.  First of all, I've been one of those notorious "wasted potential" guys for a while now.  I dropped out of college in 1999-2000, despite a few failed attempts to go back.  After a couple of years of simply waiting tables 5 hours a day, and then doing nothing else, I found myself spiraling into a pool of patheticism.  At first, there is something charming about a job which, at its earliest, requires you to be there at 4:00 PM and rarely keeps you there later than 10:00 PM, but after a while, you realize you are, quite literally, sleeping your life away.

Another reason was my experience I had when the company asked me to go to Houston for 5 weeks last summer to help train employees at a new location.  I saw, from the inside, how the company I work for exists at the higher levels, and I really liked what I saw.  I had a few conversations while I was there that began the wheels turning.

There were other, monetary reasons as well, although the money waiting tables at this job is really pretty decent.  Mostly, it was just the feeling that I was running in place, and I needed a jump start.

So, I mentioned to my GM that I might be interested in managing.  Apparently, that was all it took, because within a couple of weeks, I was doing training in the office during the day.  On a random Friday, I got a phone call asking if I'd like to do a management shift that evening.  I agreed and, fairly unceremoniously, I was a restaurant manager.

For a while, I really enjoyed it.  I guess it was mostly because I felt good about doing something, anything, constructive.  I had some motion in my life, and it was very satisfying.

So, here's a typical management day.  I arrive in the morning at 11:30.  What follows is my favorite half hour of the day, as it is just me, alone in the restaurant.  It's the only part of the day in a restaurant that is quiet.  Slowly, after that, deliveries arrive, porters and prep cooks begin their days, and the place is buzzing in no time.

During this time, I am answering phones, taking reservations, running reports on the previous day's sales, and entering invoices for inventory purposes.

I know, it all sounds dazzling.

Around 4:00, servers begin showing up setting up the front of the house.  I, and the other manager on duty, set up the tables for parties, make the floor chart, make sure everyone arrives, make the bank run, and other mundane activities.

And then we wait.  We wait a long time.  We wait because all that rushing around and getting things done has ultimately led up to a slow, dull hour or two waiting for, you know, people to get hungry.  It's my least favorite part of the day because there is absolutely nothing to do.

The night picks up, we get our pop.  I pull wine for servers, and make sure that food gets run to the tables.  Occasionally things go wrong, and I do a table visit.

Believe me, it is exactly as interesting as it sounds.

As the night draws to a close, I do server checkouts, dispense money, and wait for 10:00 to shut the place down.  Once that is done, it is merely a waiting game until all the guests leave and I can count the money and go home.

On a good day, the shifts are 10 hours long or so.  On a bad day... well... let's just say that it's a lot more than 10 hours.

A funny thing happened about 3 months ago: I started getting tired of it.  Well... actually, I didn't realize I was getting tired of it.  It first began to manifest itself as just a general dissatisfaction for my job.  (It should be noted that this coincided with several fairly chaotic incidents in the life of our restaurant.  Without going into too much detail, we went through a stretch where, for one reason or another, we lost a pretty decent amount of our staff, leaving us severely undermanned.  It was also during this time that the corporate office decided that they wanted to change virtually every step of service that we have in the restaurant.  I wasn't happy about it, but, in retrospect, I probably made that time harder on myself than I should have.  But I digress...)

The malaise I felt severely affected my mood.  I'm generally a happy person.  I'm quite often the loudest person in any given room, and most of the time it's because I'm trying to keep people laughing.  That went away entirely during this time, to the point that I was having trouble getting people to want to be around me.

So, there I was, at a job which was chaotic and unfulfilling, which put me in a bad mood, which caused people, my friends, to not want to be around me, which made the whole situation worse.  Oh yeah, and I was working tons of hours because we didn't have enough people on staff.

I dropped a few hints about it on the blog, but I didn't really talk about it too much.  Aside from some funny stories about customers and the like, I have made it a point not to complain about my job on here.  In fact, this post will represent the most I've said about my job.  This post is also, to date, the post that I'm most uncomfortable posting because of that desire to protect my job, but something that I feel is required, simply as backstory to what is happening now.

So, on to that.  About two months ago, I was mulling over what I could possibly do to enact major change in my life.  I thought about moving away somewhere.  In fact, I talked to some of you about places like San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, etc.  I thought about giving up and just getting an office job.  I thought about a lot of things.

But, eventually, what became apparent to me was that, despite the fact that I was looking for a change, change didn't have to be drastic.  In fact, the answer was something that had been lurking in the background for a while.

Last month, I spoke to the owner of our restaurant and told him that I wanted to quit managing at the end of the year because I had decided to go back to school.  This is not the first time I've tried to go back, but it is the first time that I've really, honestly wanted to go back.  I'm ready to start moving forward.

Which is the interesting part to me: I started managing because I wanted to shake things up and get some forward momentum going in my life again and, in an unexpected way, it's done just that.  While I don't look down on restaurant managers at all (quite the opposite, in fact), I realize that this is something I'll never be happy doing.  This knowledge has whipped up a real motivation in me that I haven't felt in a long time: that the future is unfolding in front of me again, and that I'm not just running in place.

It's just community college for the time being, as I have a great deal of my core curriculum hours still to earn, but I'll be able to work on the school paper there, which I'm quite excited about, and then I'll transfer on to a university where I'll focus on journalism.

It is due, in large part, to this blog that I'm going that direction, but it is the first time in my life that it all makes sense to me.  I've said this often to friends, but I wish someone had sat me down my senior year in high school, when I was dead-set on being a music major, and asked me the question, "What are the two classes that you got the most out of in high school?"  The answer was then and is now, my Sophomore and Senior English classes (Sophomore year with Mrs. Parrish, who taught me how to write, and Senior year with Mrs. Jones, who taught me how to write well), and my US Government class with Ms. Mize (the best teacher of my high school career, who had the uncanny ability to make every single student she had seem like they were her favorite.  She passed away a few years ago of breast cancer, and I'm sad that I can't go back to my classroom and visit her).   If I'd realized it then, I'd have very easily been able to decipher that journalism would be the way for me to go.

This has been lots of rambling, but it was a much needed brain dump.  All of this, incidentally, is not disconnected from this blog.  Without this blog, I would probably never have considered this move.  This blog has been the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life.  That sounds overly grandiose, but I've never written anything here that I meant more.  The community of bloggers that I've become a part of, the friends I've made, many of whom I may never meet but feel unbelievable connected to, and the ability to come here, daily, write whatever is on my mind, and that people not only read it but want to read more has been the biggest blessing I've ever received.

Thanks for being here with me during this time, and thanks for being here with me as I move into the next part of my life.  Hopefully I'll be able to make it interesting.

Although I know it will be sacrilage to some that Pat Morita is not known for his role in Happy Days, let's face it: Mr. Miyagi made Pat Morita a legend.

And now that legend has passed on. 

Miyagi: Karate come from China, sixteenth century, called te, "hand." Hundred year later, Miyagi ancestor bring to Okinawa, call *kara*-te, "empty hand."
Daniel: I thought it came from Buddhist temples and stuff like that.
Miyagi: You too much TV.

Aubrie and I made it to Kansas just fine last night (despite some crazy wrecks before we even got out of Texas), and now we are here, settling in for some Thanksgiving frivolity.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers.  I'm more thankful that you are there than you know.

Most of you will have seen this map over at Daily Kos, but it's worth seeing the contrast between the map that appeared on this blog after the election.

This map shows the President's current approval rating, by state:

And this one maps how states voted, during the 2004 election:

It's not a perfect representation, as the colors are different and it is tracking two different stats, but not a bad indicator as to the change of mood in the country.

Some sad news today.

After "Fresh Air", my local NPR station aired a show for the past 10 years hosted by Glenn Mitchell.  It was a local show which was a great companion to Terri Gross, and I listened to it constantly.

Glenn Mitchell died yesterday at 55 years old.

I found out as I was driving around this morning, and they were doing a memorial show.  His show was unique.  It was a talk show with no agenda except for the exploration of knowledge and understanding for various subjects.  His show had no boundaries.  His subjects included politics, language, music, film, politics and history.  You never knew exactly what you would get, but he had a way of asking the right questions to get to the heart of the person he was interviewing.

He was most well-known, however, for his Friday staple, "Everything you ever wanted to know" show.  Callers phoned in, asked random questions that they always wondered, and then other callers called in to answer.  It was a consistently fascinating show.

I'll miss having him around.  His show was what talk radio should be about.  Real conversation.

Justifying Torture

It's not the first time I've pointed it out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a faction of the Right Wing (of which a large number currently reside in the White House) who really don't think that torture is that bad an idea... quite the opposite in fact.  We've gone from "It's just a few bad apples" Abu Gharib talk to, "I'm not going to comment on any individual techniques..."

This Newsmax article takes it to the next step, as it attempts to use John McCain's own words about his experience being tortured as a POW as a pro-torture argument:

And - as McCain has publicly admitted at least twice - the torture worked!

[...]

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number."

There it is! The proof!  Torture works! 

Putting aside the gross mischarachterization of McCain's words, the quotes that Newsmax uses are as good an argument against torture as it is for torture.  McCain feels badly that he gave up any information at all, but the information he gave was, in fact, not useful.

It's a testament to how far the goalposts have been moved on this issue that, "We're against torture because it is beneath us and beneath our values," isn't the only point necessary, but the most common, "The intelligence isn't reliable," defense gets more headway.

So, when we have guys like the morons at Newsmax taking John McCain (one of the few people in American public life to really know the realities of torture, who then crafted some of the most strongly worded -- if ineffective -- anti-torture legislation, ever), and then twisting his words in an awkward justification for the continued degradation of our moral fiber, it provides a stunning insight that there really are Two Americas.

In one of them, torture is accepted.

Parental Notification

I need some help.

The Supreme Court is hearing a case regarding abortion and parental notification for minors today.  The idea that a parent, except for extraordinary circumstances (as determined by a judge), should be required to be a part of any medical procedure their children undergo (which they are for any other medical procedure besides this one) doesn't seem all that extraordinary to me.

Someone explain to me why this is not ok.

Aaron Brown Recap

It's pretty much died down, but in the absence of blogging, my traffic has been kept afloat by this tiny little post I wrote about Aaron Brown's departure from CNN, on November 2nd. 

I've received hundreds of hits from search engines about Aaron Brown, as well as daily comments since the day I wrote the post, by people who are sad to see him go.

And the comments are like eulogies, almost as if there is a feeling that they are writing to Aaron Brown himself.  Here's a couple of samples:

Everynight, my husband and I tuned into New Night and Aaron Brown. I thought Aaron was one of the best Anchors in the past 10 years.

-----

From here it looks like blatant age descrimination that they are trying to make more palatable with a lame attempt at giving it a candy coating. They say there wasn't room for them both? Stuff 'n nonsense!

-----

Thanks for four years of great news coverage.
I loved your "weather reports".
Good luck Aaron!

-----

Aaron Brown was both COMFORTING and REASSURING during Hurricane Katrina, ...(when we first began listening to CNN over FOX), .......BUT YOU HAVE TAKEN THAT AWAY and given us a younger, emotional reporter who doesn't carry the same 'weight', ...we feel SAD like we LOST SOMEONE VERY DEAR, much like Lou Dobbs! DON'T TOUCH HIM!!!!!

It has amazed me, first of all that this blog became a forum for this, but the depth of emotion people felt about Aaron Brown.

I personally liked Aaron Brown a lot.  Much of it had to do with 9/11.  It was just one of the many very human story lines found within that day, but Brown, finally receiving an major, national anchor job mere days before the worst tragedy in American History occurred, and he had to cover it from a balcony in front of smoking and smoldering buildings.  You could just see it in his eyes: This was the time he had waited his whole life for, and now he had to cover it while watching his fellow New Yorkers die around him.

If there is this sort of outpouring of sentiment about his dismissal from CNN, then there has to be some network executive who realizes that hiring Brown will be taping into a waiting audience (CBS, I'm talking to you).

Jobs I Have Known #6: Management

(Note: I've been a horrible blogger for the past few weeks, and then I've tried to ease my way back in, but to no avail.  There is something about reading all the current events plotlines, topics of conversation and notes of interest while not entirely allowing yourself to engage them fully that makes a blogger feel a bit guilty pretending to purport some knowledge or special insight into them.  Hopefully, this post, which is an important one, will also serve as a palate cleanser to more regular blogging.  Thanks for being patient).

For those new to the blog, there was a series of posts previous to this one which detailed my work history up to the present.  I'm skipping one job to talk about my current one, as a small but important chapter in my life is just about to close.

Most readers know (though gory tales have been slower in coming over the past 6 months) that I work at an upscale steakhouse, and have for almost 5 years.  A little less than a year and a half ago, I moved up into management at the restaurant (though I still waited tables too).  I've been managing during the entire life of this blog (in fact, my 3rd post on my fledgling blog, in July of 2004 mentioned the possibility).  The point is, for the entire time that you all have known me, I've been in management.

I began managing for lots of reasons.  First of all, I've been one of those notorious "wasted potential" guys for a while now.  I dropped out of college in 1999-2000, despite a few failed attempts to go back.  After a couple of years of simply waiting tables 5 hours a day, and then doing nothing else, I found myself spiraling into a pool of patheticism.  At first, there is something charming about a job which, at its earliest, requires you to be there at 4:00 PM and rarely keeps you there later than 10:00 PM, but after a while, you realize you are, quite literally, sleeping your life away.

Another reason was my experience I had when the company asked me to go to Houston for 5 weeks last summer to help train employees at a new location.  I saw, from the inside, how the company I work for exists at the higher levels, and I really liked what I saw.  I had a few conversations while I was there that began the wheels turning.

There were other, monetary reasons as well, although the money waiting tables at this job is really pretty decent.  Mostly, it was just the feeling that I was running in place, and I needed a jump start.

So, I mentioned to my GM that I might be interested in managing.  Apparently, that was all it took, because within a couple of weeks, I was doing training in the office during the day.  On a random Friday, I got a phone call asking if I'd like to do a management shift that evening.  I agreed and, fairly unceremoniously, I was a restaurant manager.

For a while, I really enjoyed it.  I guess it was mostly because I felt good about doing something, anything, constructive.  I had some motion in my life, and it was very satisfying.

So, here's a typical management day.  I arrive in the morning at 11:30.  What follows is my favorite half hour of the day, as it is just me, alone in the restaurant.  It's the only part of the day in a restaurant that is quiet.  Slowly, after that, deliveries arrive, porters and prep cooks begin their days, and the place is buzzing in no time.

During this time, I am answering phones, taking reservations, running reports on the previous day's sales, and entering invoices for inventory purposes.

I know, it all sounds dazzling.

Around 4:00, servers begin showing up setting up the front of the house.  I, and the other manager on duty, set up the tables for parties, make the floor chart, make sure everyone arrives, make the bank run, and other mundane activities.

And then we wait.  We wait a long time.  We wait because all that rushing around and getting things done has ultimately led up to a slow, dull hour or two waiting for, you know, people to get hungry.  It's my least favorite part of the day because there is absolutely nothing to do.

The night picks up, we get our pop.  I pull wine for servers, and make sure that food gets run to the tables.  Occasionally things go wrong, and I do a table visit.

Believe me, it is exactly as interesting as it sounds.

As the night draws to a close, I do server checkouts, dispense money, and wait for 10:00 to shut the place down.  Once that is done, it is merely a waiting game until all the guests leave and I can count the money and go home.

On a good day, the shifts are 10 hours long or so.  On a bad day... well... let's just say that it's a lot more than 10 hours.

A funny thing happened about 3 months ago: I started getting tired of it.  Well... actually, I didn't realize I was getting tired of it.  It first began to manifest itself as just a general dissatisfaction for my job.  (It should be noted that this coincided with several fairly chaotic incidents in the life of our restaurant.  Without going into too much detail, we went through a stretch where, for one reason or another, we lost a pretty decent amount of our staff, leaving us severely undermanned.  It was also during this time that the corporate office decided that they wanted to change virtually every step of service that we have in the restaurant.  I wasn't happy about it, but, in retrospect, I probably made that time harder on myself than I should have.  But I digress...)

The malaise I felt severely affected my mood.  I'm generally a happy person.  I'm quite often the loudest person in any given room, and most of the time it's because I'm trying to keep people laughing.  That went away entirely during this time, to the point that I was having trouble getting people to want to be around me.

So, there I was, at a job which was chaotic and unfulfilling, which put me in a bad mood, which caused people, my friends, to not want to be around me, which made the whole situation worse.  Oh yeah, and I was working tons of hours because we didn't have enough people on staff.

I dropped a few hints about it on the blog, but I didn't really talk about it too much.  Aside from some funny stories about customers and the like, I have made it a point not to complain about my job on here.  In fact, this post will represent the most I've said about my job.  This post is also, to date, the post that I'm most uncomfortable posting because of that desire to protect my job, but something that I feel is required, simply as backstory to what is happening now.

So, on to that.  About two months ago, I was mulling over what I could possibly do to enact major change in my life.  I thought about moving away somewhere.  In fact, I talked to some of you about places like San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, etc.  I thought about giving up and just getting an office job.  I thought about a lot of things.

But, eventually, what became apparent to me was that, despite the fact that I was looking for a change, change didn't have to be drastic.  In fact, the answer was something that had been lurking in the background for a while.

Last month, I spoke to the owner of our restaurant and told him that I wanted to quit managing at the end of the year because I had decided to go back to school.  This is not the first time I've tried to go back, but it is the first time that I've really, honestly wanted to go back.  I'm ready to start moving forward.

Which is the interesting part to me: I started managing because I wanted to shake things up and get some forward momentum going in my life again and, in an unexpected way, it's done just that.  While I don't look down on restaurant managers at all (quite the opposite, in fact), I realize that this is something I'll never be happy doing.  This knowledge has whipped up a real motivation in me that I haven't felt in a long time: that the future is unfolding in front of me again, and that I'm not just running in place.

It's just community college for the time being, as I have a great deal of my core curriculum hours still to earn, but I'll be able to work on the school paper there, which I'm quite excited about, and then I'll transfer on to a university where I'll focus on journalism.

It is due, in large part, to this blog that I'm going that direction, but it is the first time in my life that it all makes sense to me.  I've said this often to friends, but I wish someone had sat me down my senior year in high school, when I was dead-set on being a music major, and asked me the question, "What are the two classes that you got the most out of in high school?"  The answer was then and is now, my Sophomore and Senior English classes (Sophomore year with Mrs. Parrish, who taught me how to write, and Senior year with Mrs. Jones, who taught me how to write well), and my US Government class with Ms. Mize (the best teacher of my high school career, who had the uncanny ability to make every single student she had seem like they were her favorite.  She passed away a few years ago of breast cancer, and I'm sad that I can't go back to my classroom and visit her).   If I'd realized it then, I'd have very easily been able to decipher that journalism would be the way for me to go.

This has been lots of rambling, but it was a much needed brain dump.  All of this, incidentally, is not disconnected from this blog.  Without this blog, I would probably never have considered this move.  This blog has been the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life.  That sounds overly grandiose, but I've never written anything here that I meant more.  The community of bloggers that I've become a part of, the friends I've made, many of whom I may never meet but feel unbelievable connected to, and the ability to come here, daily, write whatever is on my mind, and that people not only read it but want to read more has been the biggest blessing I've ever received.

Thanks for being here with me during this time, and thanks for being here with me as I move into the next part of my life.  Hopefully I'll be able to make it interesting.

RIP Mr. Miyagi

Although I know it will be sacrilage to some that Pat Morita is not known for his role in Happy Days, let's face it: Mr. Miyagi made Pat Morita a legend.

And now that legend has passed on. 

Miyagi: Karate come from China, sixteenth century, called te, "hand." Hundred year later, Miyagi ancestor bring to Okinawa, call *kara*-te, "empty hand."
Daniel: I thought it came from Buddhist temples and stuff like that.
Miyagi: You too much TV.

Happy Thanksgiving

Aubrie and I made it to Kansas just fine last night (despite some crazy wrecks before we even got out of Texas), and now we are here, settling in for some Thanksgiving frivolity.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers.  I'm more thankful that you are there than you know.

Mapping the Change

Most of you will have seen this map over at Daily Kos, but it's worth seeing the contrast between the map that appeared on this blog after the election.

This map shows the President's current approval rating, by state:

And this one maps how states voted, during the 2004 election:

It's not a perfect representation, as the colors are different and it is tracking two different stats, but not a bad indicator as to the change of mood in the country.

Glenn Mitchell

Some sad news today.

After "Fresh Air", my local NPR station aired a show for the past 10 years hosted by Glenn Mitchell.  It was a local show which was a great companion to Terri Gross, and I listened to it constantly.

Glenn Mitchell died yesterday at 55 years old.

I found out as I was driving around this morning, and they were doing a memorial show.  His show was unique.  It was a talk show with no agenda except for the exploration of knowledge and understanding for various subjects.  His show had no boundaries.  His subjects included politics, language, music, film, politics and history.  You never knew exactly what you would get, but he had a way of asking the right questions to get to the heart of the person he was interviewing.

He was most well-known, however, for his Friday staple, "Everything you ever wanted to know" show.  Callers phoned in, asked random questions that they always wondered, and then other callers called in to answer.  It was a consistently fascinating show.

I'll miss having him around.  His show was what talk radio should be about.  Real conversation.