Category Archives: Discussion and Philosophy

In Celebration of our Flag on Flag Day

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To celebrate the flag of our great nation, I thought I’d say something about why, exactly, I love this country.

First, though, I need to list some of the goals that I think most of us have in common–the way we want this country to be.

We want to live in a country where everyone prospers. We want a country where each person has an opportunity to contribute to society, whether in a paying job or otherwise, and where everyone who puts in a full day’s work has enough to live on.

We want a country where people treat each other with respect, and receive the same in return.

We want a country with laws that apply equally to everyone, whether rich or poor, powerful or powerless.

But having these goals in common doesn’t mean we’re going to agree on how to reach them, and indeed, we all know that whenever you have a large enough group of people, there will be disagreement. Sometimes passionate disagreement.

And yet, we have to work together somehow. So we decided on a particular form of government, one that grants everyone a voice yet makes it possible to reach decisions. It’s a foregone conclusion that not everyone will like every decision, and that not every decision will turn out to have been a good one, but we’ve agreed to go along with the decisions so long as they follow from a fair process.

We designed our government knowing not only that people are fallible, but also that power corrupts and that even good people can lose touch with what’s right. So we divided the powers among three branches, to provide checks and balances. We placed limits on how long people can hold executive or legislative power before needing to be re-elected. We added a two-term limit for presidents, because we didn’t want any one person to accumulate too much power. (And why we don’t have something similar for legislators, I don’t know… but that’s another topic.)

We designed our government with the goal of being able to correct missteps when we recognize them. It doesn’t happen by itself, but the potential is there. And that is something I love about our country.

And yeah, no kings.

Till next post.

On the F-word

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Perhaps more than anything else, the way we react to language says something about what generation we belong to. I belong to the generation that didn’t grow up using “like” in every other sentence, but rapidly picked up the habit as young adults. A generation that didn’t up-talk, though I find myself doing that more often than I’d like now. A generation in which the f-word was still a serious curse word. Or as Ralphie says in A Christmas Story, “the queen-mother of dirty words”–though Ralphie was an earlier generation.

My parents made some effort not to curse too freely in front of us kids, but they certainly exclaimed “D—!”, “H—!”, or “S—!” when feeling seriously provoked (Oddly enough, my mom sometimes says “Pardon my French” when she’s just sworn in English, and “Pardon my English” when she’s just said, “M—-!”) But “Fudge!” is as close as they generally got to the f-word.

I realize that things have changed. I have a daughter. I read YA. But I can’t get used to the f-word as an all-purpose filler. How did this even happen? Of all words to popularize, why the swear word that combines sex and (threat of) violence? Weren’t we supposed to be fighting that combination?

My daughter tells me the f-word doesn’t carry that same sense of threat now, though I’m pretty sure people still say “F— you!” and tell others to “F— off!” And I suppose there are other words that also combined sex and threat that don’t strike me as forcefully, perhaps because they exist in other, innocent contexts as well. The word “screw” has a legitimate place in construction and engineering.

Language does change, whether we like it or not, and exposure has its effects. The f-word does pop into my mind when everything goes to hell in a handbasket*, though I prefer not to actually say it. I may say, like, a lot of other words that irritate me? And, like, find myself up-talking when I don’t mean to? But maybe I can stand firm on this one.

Though the euphemistic “fudge” has given way to “freak” and “frick”, so who knows?

Till next post.

*Why a handbasket? Just because it’s alliterative??

“This Music Is a Bit Repetitive”–that’s why I like it

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Hadestown, George Thorogood, Linda Book, John Denver, Styx, The Saw Doctors, The Blues Brothers, Juan Luis Guerra, The Persuasions, The Little Mermaid, Odetta, Mumbo Gumbo, Pan Jive Steel Band, Abba, Kudana, Tom Waits, Doc Watson, Billy Joel, Five O'Clock Shadow
A small selection of music I like

The other day I was driving somewhere with my mom and I had some music playing. It was Taylor Swift, as it happens–I know only a few of her songs and wanted to hear some more of them. When we arrived at our destination and I turned it off, my mother said thoughtfully, “It’s a bit repetitive.”

It isn’t the first time she’s said that about music I was listening to, and I tend to react as though she’s criticizing my music–after all, doesn’t “repetitive” imply “boring” and maybe even “unoriginal?” This time I tried to take the comment at face value, and observed that yes, this kind of music has verses and choruses and generally repeats the chorus multiple times at the end, with more or less variation, before closing.

My mother and I have different tastes in music. She loves classical, and I grew up complaining that her music was “boring”. (Yes, that was bratty of me. I didn’t fully realize that till I had a kid of my own.) I like–well, I like music with words, as well as music that is danceable. We overlap a bit on traditional folk music. (Which does have repetition in the form of choruses, but doesn’t repeat them multiple times at the end, unless the musician playing chooses to do so.)

The more I thought about her comment, though, the more I realized that repetition in this kind of music is a feature, not a bug. If the chorus is catchy or somehow pleasing, hearing it again and again is a pleasure. It’s something I can sing along to, even if I haven’t learned all the verses to the song. It’s like listening to the song over and over–it’s repetition, sure, but it’s fun.

Thinking about this led me to think some more about my aforementioned reaction to classical music. While I can pick out some repeated bits, for the most part I can’t follow the structure of the pieces. I’m sure it exists, but I don’t hear it. So for me, listening to classical is a bit like listening to a lecture on economics or accounting–first I’m lost, then I’m bored, and finally my mind drifts off to something else.

It’s possible that had I taken piano as a kid, I might have learned to appreciate classical music. But I don’t regret the time I spent instead drawing, writing, and messing around with plants. And there is plenty of music out there with wonderful lyrics and/or a danceable rhythm. I’m not going to run out of things to listen to.

And I’m not going to deny that some of the music I listen to is “repetitive.” It is–and that’s part of why I like it.