All posts in August 2018

“My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.” Mitch Hedberg

Mitch obviously bought the wrong fake plants. The ones in my house keep thriving, year after year. Sometimes they need dusting, but they wait patiently for me. While my plants add no oxygen to the atmosphere, they don’t do that sudden, inexplicable dive into death either.

Today’s advice: Are you a horticultural failure? Give up! Purchase a new plastic or silk centerpiece from the local florist or even make one of your own. A quick trip to Michael’s for flowers can set you up for years. Why not make life easy?

On a Metalevel: Pretending is essential to the maintenance of fakery. If your pretending/fakery ratio has gotten out of balance somehow, I recommend visiting art shows, and watching science fiction and fantasy movies. Reading may work even better, as your mind conjures up its personal versions of authors’ creations.

(I moved this to the eduhonesty.com blog but left it here, too.)

“You can’t go wrong if you keep silent,” the woman said.

She was telling white people not to insert themselves into the discussion spaces of other, non-white groups. Save your great opinions and listen, she tried to say. She made good points about cultural sensitivity. White Americans are programmed to leap into the protest march, shouting and waving their signs while vigorously speaking up for the less-fortunate, whoever those poor people might be.

That said, I’ve heard this narrative before. The call to silence white people has gained traction in the recent past. Another part of the same discussion extended that call to silence.

“‘I meant well’ is no excuse,” the speaker said. “Yes, you meant well, but you brought it right back to you.”

Her audience was listening attentively. I expect some of those listeners will actively try to be quieter, will intrude less often into unfamiliar cultural spaces. Less whitesplainin’ will decrease awkwardness and annoyance.

But I have growing reservations about the recent calls to silence. Social anxiety besets many of us. In any staff meeting of teachers, one finds fearless talkers — teaching favors extroverts — but also silent colleagues with their eyes mostly on their notes. These note watchers and takers speak up rarely, mostly when the spotlight falls on them against their will or a huge injustice appears to be underway. I worry that the quiet people especially will simply begin to avoid nonwhite spaces and will cease to be allies in the fight to provide equal education and equal opportunity to all. A call to silence can be a relief to someone who would prefer not to speak in the first place, a justification for avoiding awkward and potentially painful conversations. At what point does that relief become permission to drop issues of social equality in favor of less frightening topics? One reason so many health teachers of the past described anatomy in excessive detail was that putting parts into a puzzle allowed a teacher to avoid the topic of how those parts might be used.

Here’s a vote for inclusivity, one that allows for a little whitesplainin’ and bumbling — because we all have those bumpy, bumbly moments, along with a reminder to my white readers that, in fact, you cannot know what it’s like to be African-American or a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Here’s a vote for silence, kindness, compassion and communication as we gather together to fix historical wrongs.

I added an app called HealthyBot to my life and HealthyBot had moments. But then I woke to the coffee post.

HealthyBot wanted me to ramp up the healthiness of my morning coffee, clearly a problematic area and often a wasted opportunity. I’m sure the sugar content in many morning coffee cups matches that of a giant Butterfinger bar, and the cream may carry that cup up to Butterfinger fat levels. So attacking coffee makes sense. But then the Bot suggested I add butter and coconut oil to my morning coffee. Specifically, I was supposed to add GRASS-FED butter. I believe my app must be run by cybernetic organisms. Or maybe vacuum cleaners.

But this example probably explains why I am listening to very few alleged authorities nowadays. The formerly-evil coconut seems to have hired a great PR team. I’m happy for the coconut. But I am just so done listening to these fools. Let the vacuum cleaner drink that coffee.

I will eat and drink what I want, sticking to a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and other foods in reasonable quantities.

P.S. In fairness, HealthyBot has useful advice — interspersed with moments when they decide to jump off the cliff.

P.S.S. To any teachers out there, if this fits your curriculum, please feel free to use my post for discussion.