The Sky’s the Limit

The creativity of some public school teachers, particularly in the elementary grades, never ceases to amaze me. I have just finished reading an article in, of all places, “Weather Watch” by Robert Krier. In the article, he relates how a fifth grade teacher began her school year by closing the blinds to her classroom and asking the class to describe what the sky looked like that day. Most of her pupils would end up by writing that the sky was either blue or gray.

The teacher would then take them outside, have them look up, and write what they saw. This activity became a daily ritual. Soon, her pupils were writing entire paragraphs about the cloud effects and the changing colors, and the drama of huge rain clouds forming before a rain.

This teacher used the sky as the theme for everything she taught that year--spelling, social science, science, art, literature, mathematics, history. The pupils learned to make predictions by predicting the weather; they learned graphing skills by graphing the temperature changes; they made a sundial large enough for the kids to stand and measure their shadows at different times of the day. In their study of the sky, the pupils incorporated elements of math, science, and astronomy.

For their fifth-grade state projects , the teacher had the pupils forecasting the weather. For art appreciation, she had them discuss how famous artists had depicted the sky in their works. She had them listen to and discuss how composers had treated sky themes. She had them read passages in literature showing how great writers had depicted the sky.

While engaged in all of these activities , the pupils were learning about their environment and the importance of protecting it. They were learning how to use their imagination and about the beauty of nature and how all of nature is interconnected. They learned how to make observations and to organize and express their thoughts, both orally and in written form.

Of course, in using this approach to learning, we trust that the teacher was aware that her pupils might not be fully prepared for the test-score-based curriculum demanded by the “No Child Left Behind” curriculum backed by the Bush administration. Better go back to the classroom with its emphasis on reading and math, the textbooks, the workbook pages, the memorization, and the preparation for the tests.

Is Our Nation Going to the Dogs?

An estimated 60 million pet dogs and nearly 70 million pet cats live in the United States. The dogs think there are too many doggone cats in this nation, and the cats believe that the dog population has reached catastrophic proportions. That brings up a relevant question: since the dog and cat population is fairly equal, which makes the better pet?

I have owned both dogs and cats, and I believe I can make a case that a dog makes a better pet. A dog is an animal that has worked for thousands of years to earn the title of “Man’s (and Woman’s) Best Friend”. Think of how useful, other than as pets, dogs are to people. They guard our homes, our businesses, and even our nation.

A dog looks up at its owner with adoring eyes that say, “Master, I am here to serve you. I will do anything to please you.“ Now, consider a cat. It looks at its owner with haughty eyes that say, “Mister, you are here to serve and please me. And don’t you forget it.”

A dog is grateful to receive almost any scrap of food from your table. When you attempt to feed table scraps to a cat , it will think, “Is this the best you can do? I refuse to eat this garbage. I demand gourmet cat food.”

Dogs defend people in their homes. Doesn’t having a dog in your home make you feel safer? Even the smallest dog will bark if someone tries to break into your home. What does a cat do in a similar situation? It won’t even meow.

Dogs love to go for walks. Have you ever tried to walk your cat? A cat has its own mind as to what it wants to do and when it wants to do it. Let’s suppose you take your dog on a hike while camping in the mountains. A branch falls from a tree and lands on your leg, trapping you underneath. Its weight prevents you from freeing yourself. In this situation, would you rather have Morris the cat or Lassie the dog with you? You have seen those episodes on television in which Lassie rescues a loved one by running for help. Now let’s substitute Morris the cat for the dog on the hike. You are in the same predicament. You cry out to the cat, “Morris, go get help!” What do you think would happen? Stupid cat! “Meow, meow, meow, meow! Feed me my 9Lives cat food right now. I’m hungry.”

When it comes to training, dogs are so much more intelligent. A dog can be trained to do innumerable tricks such as fetching your carpet slippers and a newspaper. When I go to a dog beach, I see dozens of people having fun with their dogs by tossing a ball into the surf. The dogs will swim quite far out into the surf to retrieve it, come ashore dripping wet, shake their bodies vigorously, and return the ball to their owners. Then, with anticipation in their eyes and tails, they communicate that they want to do it all over again. Try that with a cat. They don’t even want to get wet.

When you come home from work, your dog will greet you with a happy grin and a wagging tail that says, “I am so happy to see you. I have missed you all day.” When I used to arrive home from work, my dog and I played hide and seek. When she heard the garage door go up, she would go to her doggy run and wait for me to go inside the house and hide. I would hide in a different place each day, and I would hear her “sniff, sniff, sniff” as she searched for me. When she found me, she would greet me with barking and a wagging tail until I gave her a bellyrub. A cat might greet you when you return home from work, but you know it is only because it wants to be fed.

A dog will defend its owner, and we have all read about those cases in which the family dog rescued a family member from a burning building or from drowning. Compare that with the selfish cat that would never risk its own life to save that of anyone else.

All of these are reasons why I, as a former owner of both dogs and cats, can say without hesitation and equivocation, that I prefer an altruistic dog to a self-absorbed cat any day.

What about you? Do you prefer a dog or a cat as a pet? Why? Or do you have both? What are the advantages and disadvantages of owning each?

Looking for the Fountain of Youth

For thousands of years, attempts have been made to combat the aging process and to prolong human life. Efforts to find the Fountain of Youth, a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters, extend from the legend of Alexander the Great over 2300 years ago to the myth some 1800 years later that Ponce de Leon was searching for a similar spring in Florida.

In the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a tale about a doctor named Heidegger who conducted an “experiment” in an attempt to answer the age-old question of whether a fountain of youth would improve the lot of humankind. In the experiment, Heidegger administered a magical potion to four elderly male friends to see if they would learn from their past mistakes as they once again became young. After drinking the “youth liquor”, the four now young men eventually started arguing over the attention of a young woman and grappled fiercely with one another. In the ensuing melee, a table holding a vase with the magical potion tumbled onto the floor, where it broke into a thousand pieces. The “Water of Youth” flowed onto the floor, and the young men became old again.

In 1985, Ron Howard directed a film titled “Cocoon”. In the film, a group of aliens returned to earth to take back some cocoons of their people they left behind from an earlier trip. The cocoons had been resting at the bottom of the ocean. After recovering some of the cocoons, the aliens stored them in the swimming pool of a house they rented in a small Florida town. Their mission was hampered by a number of old people from a home for the elderly nearby, who had been secretly using the pool and discovering the unusual power of these cocoons. After swimming in the pool, these elderly swimmers suddenly felt energetic and filled with the joy of youth.

Today, in our contemporary search for the Fountain of Youth, we can find anti-aging products hyped in the media. Scientists who have studied aging have issued a position statement with a warning that no “currently marketed intervention has yet been proved to slow, stop, or reverse human aging, and some of the products can be downright dangerous.”

Now along comes David Copperfield, the renowned magician, who announced in August of this year that he has found the “Fountain of Youth” in the southern Bahamas, amid a cluster of tiny islands he recently purchased for $50 million. Do you believe that he has actually discovered the Fountain of Youth?

Questions:

If a “Fountain of Youth” did exist, would you drink from it?
Would you want to be young forever?
If you could remain one age forever, what age would that be; and why would you choose that age?

Guess What a Dollar Can Buy?

One cold morning in December, a man stopped at the C & L convenience store near his home outside Hurricane, a small West Virginia town near Charleston. It was his habit to stop there for a breakfast sandwich and to chat with the clerk, whom he knew very well. On that particular morning, he made a decision that was to affect him and his family for the rest of their lives. He decided to spend one dollar on a multi-state Powerball lottery ticket.

The Powerball lottery drawing took place on Christmas Day, 2002 and after checking the winning numbers (53-14-5-16-29, and the Powerball number 7), the man thought he missed winning by one digit. He later considered himself fortunate that he didn’t tear up or dispose of the ticket. The next morning, when he learned that the winning ticket had been sold at the convenience store where he bought the lottery ticket, he decided to check his ticket again and discovered that he had misread the winning numbers and had beaten the odds of 120 million to 1 of winning the lottery. He was the lone winner of $314.9 million, the largest lottery amount up to that time in American history. He decided to take the cash payment instead and cleared $113.9 million after Uncle Sam took his cut of the winnings.

That man was Jack Whittaker, already a wealthy owner of a construction business. His business was thriving; he was happily married; and he doted on his 17-year-old granddaughter Brandi. Little did he know the effect that this sudden vast fortune would have on his life.

First, the positives in his life. Jack wasn’t a religious man; one might say instead that he was a “churchy” man. He believed in tithing, so one of the first things he did was to build a $4 million church for his pastor. In addition, he gave $20 million to three other preachers and built two more churches. In an attempt to help the needy poor people in West Virginia, he formed a foundation for the purpose of feeding and clothing them. And he didn’t forget Brandi, the granddaughter that he loved so much. He gave her not only her own apartment while she was still a teen, but also, several vehicles, including a Hummer and Cadillac Escalade. And, Grandpa Whittaker never refused to give her cash when she asked for it.

Next, the negatives in his life. In August of 2003, Jack was robbed of over $500,000 in cash and bonds he had left in his car parked at a strip club. In January of 2004, he was arrested on an assault charge. In March of 2004, he was arrested for pinching the breasts of a woman at a race track. He was arrested more than once on DUI and weapons charges. But the most damaging blow came about when his beloved granddaughter Brandi died from an overdose of cocaine and methadone.

Finally, in May of 2005, Jack's wife Jewell filed for divorce. In September of 2006, she requested that the Court award her part ownership in over 25 companies owned by her ex-husband, and the companies have contended that her filing cut off their credit.

Jewell also was heard to lament that the Powerball jackpot had destroyed her family. As she said, "I wish now that I had torn up that winning lottery ticket."

Questions: You have just won the Powerball jackpot. You'll have $100 million after taxes.

Who do you call first?
What is the first thing you buy for yourself?
What is the first thing you buy for someone else?
Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?
Do you invest any? If so, how?
What creative ways can you think of to use the money?

Love Conquers All

She is black and blind. He is white and blind. Both are blind as a result of tumors. He is handsome. She had a reasonably attractive face last year before she got another tumor on her cheek. The chemotherapy and radiation left her with twisted facial features. Their blindness has allowed each of them to get past all the physical barriers to their love for each other and to find the inner beauty that each possesses. Last weekend, they were married.

Perhaps if all of us were blind, we could see better.