Essential

Must-reads from the Bubbler

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Yesterday was Gay Pride Parade day across many cities in the U.S., and I got to wondering. I remember attending a few Pride parades in San Francisco. Back in the day, Pride parades were mainly men wearing only chaps, tiny speedo’s, drag, burlesque-wear, or nothing at all. People would come from the surrounding cities to catch the spectacle (or a few naked people). To middle America, it seemed an in-your-face showcase of the perceived deviance and perversion that always made them reluctant to accept gays in the first place. Which got me thinking… If the purposes of the Pride…

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Was there murder before guns?

Have you ever thought about how people used to kill each other before guns? Thinking about the people who are seeking gun control, there seems to be a uniting thought that murder (or at least mass murder) wouldn’t happen if there weren’t guns. Yet, people have been killing each other since there have been people. (Which really seems to legitimize the old saw, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”) But how did people do it before guns? Heck, how do they do it now without guns? Plowing into crowds of people with your vehicle seems to be the…

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Show up

My kid’s high school coach has been making himself available for Summer practices and trainings for the past month, and is doing so for the next. About a third of the kids from last year’s teams, or those who want to move up on this year’s teams, have been attending. He recently had a tournament in which he needed to call upon three members of the incoming freshmen class to play with the varsity kids. Consider that: you’re an incoming freshmen to a high school, and the varsity coach is already asking you to play with the varsity team….

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Driving with a live animal on your lap

States and municipalities are adopting variations of “distracted driver” laws in an attempt to reduce accidents caused by texting, talking on the phone, and looking at your GPS. Police are now standing by to pull you over if you’re holding a phone or, in some cases, using your headphones to have a phone conversation. Yet somehow, it’s not a danger driving around with a live animal on your lap. I have two neighbors who own small dogs, and both routinely hop in the car, put the dog in their lap, and drive to wherever they’re going. What could go…

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Stand clear for the bike ambulance

All over the country, cities are taking out car lanes and turning them into bike lanes. Based on the changes we’re making, you’d think the city streets were running red with the blood of mangled bikers. Partly motivated by creating safer conditions for bikers, partly motivated by reducing the incentive to drive your car, local politicians are deciding that’s what’s best for their towns and cities. But I think we’re losing sight of the politician/citizen dynamic. Lest anyone forget, politicians are hired by citizens. They report to us. We are the boss. Under our republican form of government, we…

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Worldwide slavery

Living in the US, we are understandably concerned mainly with our own history of slavery (when such things are discussed). But I got to wondering, do other countries constantly debate or rehash their own histories of slavery? Slavery is not unique to the United States. Not even close. A simple look at “slavery” in Wikipedia will give you a high level run down of slavery, over the years, and around the world. We tend to look at slavery only through the lens of living in the United States, and how it has left a lasting set of challenges for…

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Have we overcorrected?

According to this article in Investor’s Business Daily, the earth has been cooling. So I guess we’ve overcorrected. Our response to global warming was to stop driving Hummers, remove the freon from our refrigerators, stop spraying aerosol cans, recycle everything in site, drive Prius’, pollute fairgrounds on Earth Day, and use no more than one square sheet of toilet paper every time you use the restroom (with no flush). But we apparently went to far, because we went from heating the earth too much to cooling it too much. I wonder when we’ll hear the calls to reverse course….

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Unoffendable

There’s always a desire to simplify the complicated. An interest in boiling down an intricate set of events or decisions into one convenient sound bite. So, here’s mine… Be unoffendable. Find humor and joy in everything. Don’t take it all too seriously. Be willing and able to laugh at yourself. There are way too many people actively seeking ideas, words, phrases, visuals, or actions that will offend them. I’m not sure what drives that. Need to justify innate anger? Wanting to have a cause? Seeking purpose? If you’re unoffendable, you’ll see some interesting changes around you. People will start…

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A matter of perspective

When I hear people say things like, “we can learn so much from our children,” I can’t help but think that it’s the adults who are teaching the kids, not the other way around. But last night, I had one of those moments that reminded me of what those people mean. The kid and I were sitting and talking and there was a glass half full of water sitting there. So I asked, “Do you think this glass is half full or half empty?” She thought a second and said, “It depends.” “If you started with an empty glass…

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Fear: a key ingredient in bad decisions

On more than one occasion, my Dad has told me this story, and he swears it is true: One day, the President of his company was walking into their headquarters. As he was walking in, he noticed that some workers were erecting scaffolding around the outside front of the building. When he got inside, he went to the Building Services Manager and asked “What’s all the scaffolding for?” The manager interpreted the question from the President as a sign of disapproval and ordered the workers to take down the scaffolding. At the end of the day, as the President…

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