I downloaded the photos I've been taking with my Leica M10R. I put a 28mm lens on it, set it to range focus, and snapped away on my walks without using the viewfinder. I didn't like a single image I'd taken. Just to let you know.
I didn't go to the birthday party last night. My life is not my own. Things went off the rails when I came back to my mother's house with dinner--two luscious burgers and some fries from the Boulevard Burger Emporium--at her request. The neighbors were there, first one, then her husband. They sat for an hour as our luscious burgers got cold. Then we ate. It was dark. I texted a note explaining I would not make it.
In truth, I don't mind staying home. But I mean MY home. I had spent many weekends in my house without leaving. But I was with MY stuff. My leather couch. My books, music, pictures. . . and stuff. I'm a homeboy unless something exotic calls. So it wasn't hard to choose not going to the party.
But. . . my mother's couch, her colors, her. . . whatever.
O.K. But parties make me nervous.
Rather, I made a grocery run at seven-thirty. Even that was difficult. . . until I got out. Away. But the crowd that grocery shops on Saturday nights can be pretty depressing. There are not so many. Just us losers. And the poor bastards who have to close on a Saturday night.
When I got back to my mother's, she had CNN on. And to my surprise, it was Bill Maher. I couldn't imagine why she was watching it. Maybe she wasn't. I poured a drink that I said I wouldn't pour and sat down to watch it.
I remembered that I don't like Bill Maher.
Then I watched some CNN show with an Irish guy giving us the lowdown on racism, racists, a white's only community in Arkansas, and South Africa. The show set up a dichotomy. Were whites being persecuted? Was there a White Genocide?
As I watched the show, I realized that they had set up a false dichotomy, one that always gets perpetrated. The problems are more complex, more nuanced, than the show presented, but they know their audience, I guess. People don't want complexities. They want black and white.
Pun intended.
I began to think about audiences and tv shows, and the idea occurred to me that people have become infantilized by television. The most popular shows are about adults with the minds of children. They say silly things and are always wondering out loud about the obvious. They are, by and large, goofy.
Most of the shows I like don't last, and when they do, it is not because they have huge audiences. People like comic book movies. WTF? Television and radio commercials are delivered in sing-song voices one uses when talking to children.
Audiences have been infantilized.
Notable & Quotable: Schools
Andrew Rice writing for New York magazine, Nov. 18: Last winter, the federal government released the results of its semiannual reading and math tests of fourth- and eighth-graders, assessments that are considered the most authoritative measure of the state of learning in American elementary and middle schools. In nearly every category, the scores had plunged to levels unseen for decades—or ever. On reading tests, 40 percent of fourthgraders and one-third of eighthgraders performed below “ basic,” the lowest threshold. A separate assessment of 12th-graders conducted this past spring—the first since schools were shuttered by the COVID pandemic—yielded similarly crushing results. Many graduated from high school without the ability to decipher this sentence. How can I assume that? The test asked them to define the word decipher, and 24 percent got it wrong.
“You can’t believe how low ‘ below basic’ is,” says Carol Jago, a former public-school teacher who has served on the board that oversees . . . the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “The things that those kids aren’t able to do is frightening.”
Maybe there is a correlation. I sent this to some educator friends of mine.
"Sure. . . now's a good time to get rid of the DoE."
I didn't respond to that, but I thought, well, we had the Dept. of Ed the entire time education was being ruined.
Who is to blame?
It is complex. It is nuanced. Let me be CNN, though, for a moment. It was republican state legislatures insisting that all students must pass. And it was the exponentially growing number of Ed.D.s.
"The Ed.D. is the G.E.D. of doctorates," said my old boss. Anyone with half a brain despises that degree. I know people who got them for career advancement who totally agree. But you will find that most educational institutes are packed with them at the admin level.
I'd say the Ed.D. is the infantilized doctorate.
Bingo!
Maybe we need more sporting events.
Joke. Have you ever listened to a sports talk program? WTF?
Then. . . it was time for bed.
"Funny talk from a Peter Pan boy."
It is already Thanksgiving week. I feel I'm missing everything. My mother is up and doesn't know if it is morning or night. She doesn't know what day it is. She is not "in the season." Christmas won't be much this year. I won't be out on the Boulevard on Xmas eve with all the widows and orphans. I won't be looking into shop windows holding hands with my own true love in pre-Christmas wonder. The "magic" of the season has just dissipated.
Still. . . we soldier on. Wendy's grown up and Tinker Bell has flown the coupe. I'm left with Hook and his crocodile now.
Yea. . . I know. . . I'm one to talk. Well. . . let me make up for that. Last night, driving to the grocers, I heard these two songs and felt a deep twinge.
It felt pretty adult.
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