Why this blog is dying

The reason is Facebook and Twitter. Ever since I got on Facebook, I've been neglecting this blog, which anyone can see from the once-a-month posts. I'm not sure I'll be reviving it any time soon.
Facebook and Twitter suit my kind of running off-the-cuff commentary on the world. They also can be updated instantly from anywhere thanks to my phone.
Of course, this blog can too, which leads me to ponder why I love updating through FB and not my blog. And the only conclusion I can muster is this: Facebook is a captive audience. I know that my friends who log on regularly are seeing my updates. This poor blog, at its zenith, was read by about 10 visitors a day.
Blogging takes a bit of effort, some reflection upon events and thoughts before posting. I don't know why this is so, because you could just post two unedited lines of text like Twitter. But blogs seem to encourage more expounding. Facebook and Twitter just flatter that childish self-absorbtion - look at me, look at me! - and require minimal investment of thought and time. Which is not to say that I don't spend inordinate amounts of time on both platforms...
Speaking of which, if you want to follow my tweets, I am tayne_gheel on Twitter. Before you follow, a warning. I post incessantly.

Wake up Mr. West!

On Thursdays and Fridays, my law school section has an 8 a.m. class. It's the only one we have all week, but I've noticed a trend. On Fridays earlier in the semester, a couple students would straggle in late. Once a rather bleary-eyed, scratchy-faced student trudged in an hour after class began. One of the legal fraternities sponsors a weekly after-hours at a different local tavern on Thursday nights. It's pretty popular among law students. Seems to have an effect...
But now the trend of blowing off the subsequent morning class is picking up speed. This Friday, half a dozen students didn't bother to show up. Because the professor teaches the same class later in the morning, several students have taken to showing up to that one instead.
I sort of have to chuckle to myself when observing the hibernation habits of the recent undergraduate. You just can't get away with rolling in whenever you want in the "real world." And there aren't make-up work days. Oh well. They'll figure it out...

How we really chose presidents

Today's N.Y. Times op-ed page has a great graphic comparing the height and weight of presidential candidates.
Taller guys beat shorter guys by a 2-to-1 margin and heavier guys prevailed over lightweights with equal dominance. But I took the N.Y. Times analysis one step further and combined the two measures. In the 28 elections since 1896, the winner was either heavier or taller than the loser in all but three cases, thus proving beyond all doubt that Americans want the bigger guy when deciding who should run the free world. The most recent exception was Bush v. Gore; Al Gore is an inch taller W, but we all know he actually won the election, so there's an exception that proves the rule.
Harry Truman, a man of average stature, beat Thomas Dewey, who stood a full three inches over him. Likewise, Teddy Roosevelt was two inches shorter than Alton Parker when he won in 1904. But both men had reputations for their outsized personalities, so again, I say they're exceptions that prove the rule.
Where do these statistics leave our current candidates? Obama is 6' 1½" and 180 pounds. John McCain is 5' 7" and 165 pounds. There hasn't been a president as short as McCain in a hundred years. The closest weight was Calvin Coolidge, who was only four pounds heavier, but he was still three inches taller than McCain. Turn-of-the-century president William McKinley was 5' 7", which was the last time such a short man was president. And, well, he was shot to death in office.
Every president in the television age has been at least 6 feet tall (Well, Nixon was 5' 11½").
Who will win in November? You decide.

Content overload

My apologies for the lack of posts. Law school has crimped my ability to think about anything other than "The Law." The Law is something that you say in a deep, booming voice. You also spend most of your waking moments thinking about it when you're studying it. I'm sure I could write insightful posts explaining the difference between assault and battery or musing about why intentional infliction of emotional distress is a very difficult tort with which to establish a cause of action. I'm not sure you'd read them. My first writing assignment is due next week. It's a five-page memo analyzing a set of three different cases about the same tort. Right now, I'm taking a break from reading about the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs transactions that involve the sale and delivery of "goods." And of course, we're going to be lawyers, so we spent half of the last class period debating what "goods" are. Are the data on a computer software CD goods? If a stylist puts gel in your hair while cutting it, that's a goods transaction in the midst of a service, so should it be governed by the statute?

That's what I've been doing for the last two weeks. But now, I have to stop and drink this all in. I'M STUDYING LAW. LAW!!! I don't have any good reason to expect to attain such a profession. My father is a tree husbandman. My grandfather was a baker. My great-grandfather was a farmer. I'm only the second generation of my family to have a college degree. And here I am, studying to join a bona fide profession. I can't believe it.

Running away with your mind

The parking lot for law students is more than a quarter mile walk from the law school. But the path is through a forest and over a gulch that has a long wooden bridge over it. It's rather scenic during the day, but at night it's a bit spooky. Of course, as a 6' 2" male, I'm not really worried I'll be mugged or assaulted, but that doesn't prevent my mind from getting imaginative when it's dark.

Last night I shut down the law library, so I had to walk out to my car at midnight. About three students from another part of campus were walking along a path that crossed mine before I entered the woods. I didn't know them so we just passed each other without a greeting. As I walked into the dark forest, my mind started its usual wandering. I told myself, "I don't believe in spooks, I don't believe in spooks." Then rational thought took over and reminded me that there was nothing to be afraid of. I crossed the bridge.

One of the threesome screamed. My back of my neck got cold. Then my rational mind took over again: I'm sure one of them was just fooling around, I thought. After all, who would take on three people? The attacker wouldn't be able to prevail against them all. Unless it was a huge blood-lusting monster with fangs and mouth tentacles and an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

If so, I thought, there's nothing I can do because I'll be mauled and eaten within minutes. So I walked to my car and drove home.

Reflections on department stores

One thing that's true about the life cycle of business is reinforced by my last post. Industries start with a bunch of vibrant small players until consolidation begins, the industry matures and eventually declines.
Department stores grew in the late 19th and early 20th century by being all things to all people, selling clothes, home goods, luxury items, and offering exemplary service. Although Marshall Field's grew dominant, there were dozens of dry goods retailers in Chicago back then. Eventually Field's got big enough that it forced out the smaller players and controlled the market. But now it's in its dotage and little upstarts that specialize in one thing - like watches - are stealing market share.
Another thing about Field's - it was a racist outfit. Besides pricing at the top of the marketfor upper middle class whites, it never tried to attract immigrants who filled Chicago in it's ascendancy - other department stores did. And blacks were outright refused service. So I guess if the institution dies, it's getting its just desserts.

It's not lost on me that newspapers are susceptible to this cycle and are getting beat to death by their smaller competitors, a.k.a. Craigslist, Monster.com and other online ad venues. Don't let anybody fool you. Newspapers are not "competing" with blogs. Nobody reads blogs for local news, and most blogs link to the MSM anyway. The real competition is from other platforms that sell advertisements. Because the bottom line is, that's what newspapers make money on.

Waterproof?

I'm giving Nicholas a taste of camping tonight by sharing a tent with him in the orchard at the farm where my parents are staying this summer. But I'm getting a pretty good mouthful too. It's about midnight and it's POURING rain. As a former Boy Scout, I knew how to pitch this tent to stay dry. But I can't help but wonder if the waterproofing will hold up under this torrent when tiny droplets of water are hitting my skin.
At least Nicholas is sound asleep. Wish I was too...
The rain smells good though. And the thunderclaps are immense.

Asking for directions

I was walking across the street this afternoon when a battered blue minivan pulled up next to me to ask for directions. In the passenger seat was Latino man with a buzz cut and unshaven whiskers. He asked me for "dohj street" in broken English and pointed to a street address scrawled on the back of a folded yellow paper.
I've lived in Rockford nearly all my life and I've never heard of a Dodge Street. A quick look on my Treo's Google Maps confirmed it -- there isn't such a street in Rockford. Then he showed me the rest of his chicken-scratch note:

1111 dodge st
duplex, iwoa
52003

Then I realized -- he was trying to get someplace in IOWA. Whoa. I told him he was in Illinois. He groaned. I asked, where are you coming from? Miami was the answer.
The minivan was full: half a dozen Spanish-speaking adults on the seats and their gear crammed into the recesses. They chattered back and forth in their tongue, unintelligible to me. I assume they were migrant workers, coming up here to meet someone with nothing more than an address and a cursory grasp of the language. Later, I tried to imagine what it would be like to try and travel 1,500 miles in an unfamiliar country -- especially as a stranger.
To try and help out, I turned to Google Maps again and searched the address based on the ZIP, I came up with Dubuque, Iowa -- the town he wrote as "duplex," I'm sure.
Even though this caravan was about 90 miles away from his destination, I could at least help a little. They were only four blocks from East State Street, which is Business U.S. 20, so I sent them back that way and told them to take it west all the way. It goes straight through Dubuque.
They should have made it by now. I really hope they did.

Touch of gray

Today I was over at Meegan's apartment discussing how we were going to handle Nicholas' transfer of placement when she looked at the top of my head and exclaimed, "You've got a gray hair!"
Actually, I had several. This caused her considerable glee.
I guess at the tender age of 31, my world weariness is finally catching up with me. I can't say I'm too surprised. Between the divorce, work stresses, caring for a hyper 5-year-old boy, trying to sell a house and getting ready to move, I think I've earned every one of those three gray hairs.
I've never been somebody who wanted to cling to youth. I've always wanted to be older, ever since I was a first grader hanging out with my sixth grade cousins. They seemed so sophisticated and grown up. I want the respect and wisdom that come with age. Meegan would tease me that I was an old man in a young man's body. Well, looks like the body is catching up with the soul.
So next week I'm going to get my will made up and start shopping for cemetery plots.

Quit yer whining

I know I bellyached about working last Saturday, but it turned out to be great. I got to cover a speech by Sister Souljah. Here's my article about it.
For those of you who forgot, Sister Souljah (as in, Soldier) was the little-known community activist who recorded a few tracks with Public Enemy in the early '90s. But her big time exposure came in 1992 when she answered a question from a Washington Post reporter about what was motivating the Los Angeles rioters:

I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I'm saying? In other words, white people, this government, and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, or above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind? (emphasis mine)

That italicized chestnut earned Souljah the rebuke of then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who used the comment in his presidential campaign as a way to distance himself from black extremism and reassure Southern whites that he could stand up to black folks. Calling out Souljah for her racism was a little like being against terrorism or lukewarm coffee. I mean, who isn't? Now, using that kind of political grandstanding to engender solidarity with a certain voter base is known as a "Sister Souljah moment."
Anyway, back to the speech. It was enlightening to hear her speak because while it's easy to dismiss her as an extremist, her perspective resonated with most of the black audience that night. There's so much lingering resentment among black people that Souljah's not so far out of the mainstream. It's also unfair to judge her on one or two soundbites because most of her talk seemed like a sermon imploring her black audience to stand up, stop imbibing corrosive hip-hop misogyny and hedonism and take control of their destiny.