Politics, Organizational Management and The Brazil Nut Effect

© 2012 by Tom King

License: some rights reserved by Melchior

There is an odd phenomenon to be found in a bowl of mixed nuts called the Brazil nut effect. Some unknown physical property of a bowl of nuts makes big nuts rise to the surface and smaller ones to sink. What does that have to do with organizational management, politics and practically any endeavor involving groups of people? I’m glad you asked.

Any time you collect a large group of people, leaders of men (and women) are faced with a curious phenomenon. It always seems, in any crowd, that the more, shall we say, “colorful” characters in the group tend to vie for a place at the crowd’s center.

When I was in college, the president of the college hosted a beautiful testimony service one fine Sabbath afternoon. Dozens of students and visitors took turns standing up front describing how God had blessed them in one way or another. I noticed a slight disturbance down front as Elder L., the college president got up to close the meeting.

It was Erma (not her real name)!

Erma was an odd little woman who wandered around town in her own private world conducting some business none of us could ever quite figure out. She dressed in bag lady clothes and sometimes pushed a little cart. I think she lived with her elderly mother. She was quite religious and attended church every week which often led to incidents like this one.

Erma insisted she be allowed to testify! She had a message for the congregation of 2,000 some odd college students and local families. Elder L. looked pale, but he was also a very kind-hearted man and couldn’t say, “No,” to her without being mean about it.

Erma mounted the stage, and took her place behind the mike. Stand there in her faded brown dress with her long stringy hair, grandma boots and wild eyes, she solemnly announced, “I know what’s wrong with me.”

The audience drew its collective breath. You could hear it – a kind of choral gasp.

Erma proceeded to explain that for years she’s had this terrible problem and she finally had figured out what caused it.

“It was spices!” she said in deadly earnest scanning the auditorium with a stern gaze. The crowd was holding it’s breath.

“They make me sexy!”

The place erupted in what can only be described as a choral snort. The noise of 2000 people trying their best not to laugh is excruciating. The student body president nearly fell off his pew. He buried his head in his jacket and began to shake violently, emitting pathetic little hooting noises.

The reverant atmosphere that had earlier pervaded the meeting now shattered, Elder L. thanked her politely for her words and a couple of deacons gently helped her down off the rostrum and guided her to her seat. Elder L.'s closing prayer for God to give us all strength was completely heartfelt and shared by the entire congregation..

You may have noticed at parties or get-togethers that if you set out a bowl of mixed nuts and shake it a few times, pretty soon the Brazil nuts all seem to be sitting atop the pile. No one really knows why, but if you pile up any assortment of things of varying sizes, be they nuts, nails or dirt and rocks, the big stuff in the mix always rises to the top. That seems counter-intuitive because big things are usually heavier than smaller things and you would think they would sink to the bottom. No one has yet quite demonstrated why, rather than sinking to the bottom, Brazil nuts, big brass buttons, Doritos or boulders gradually work their way to the top of the heap.

 

License: Some rights reserved by s58y

It’s why, for no matter how many centuries the Irish have tilled their fields relentlessly removing literally tons of rocks over the generations, new stones keep popping up out of the dirt every year. It’s why you reach into a bowl of mixed nuts and always lay hands on the Brazil nuts first. If you come later, there's only peanuts and filberts at the bottom. No one’s ever successfully explained why this is so.

I think that the Brazil nut effect must also apply to groups of people. I do notice that the people with the most “gravity”, the obnoxious, overbearing or embarrassing among us don’t sink out of sight in groups. They tend to rise to the top and dominate the proceedings.The biggest, most "colorful" or the most seriously mentally disturbed individuals in any nation's political ruling class seem to inevitably rise to the top spot. Look at the glorious collection of megalomaniacs, eccentrics and downright lunatics that have dominated the top spots in government after government. The Brazil Nuts of history stick out like big old sore thumbs - Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, Nero, Caligula, Nebuchadnezzar (who spent seven years crawling around in a field eating grass), Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and King George III to name a few of the more spectacular individuals. There were also some decent sorts of larger-than-life individuals who also set their mark upon history; gentlemen like the great George Washington, eccentrics like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, odd-ducks like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt and unlikely characters like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Mahatma Ghandi.

Jesus said, the meek (that's the small unobtrusive nuts) will inherit the earth. Does that mean the big old Brazil nuts among us will be left behind - plucked from the top of the bowl and cast aside?

Perhaps, so, though I don't think every Big Nut will necessarily be winnowed from amongst the chosen. God seems to like colorful characters. He picked an awful lot of unusually colorful  men and women for his service over the centuries. The disciples were rag-tag lot of hard-living rough-talking fishermen, terrorists and tax-collecters. God may, however, hone the bigger of us nuts down to size in order to insure the peace and safety of the New Earth. If that's the case, I suspect that the Good Lord will need to work me over with a rasp to whittle my ego down to proper size.
Living in hope,

Tom King  
UPDATE 2016:  Once again the principle is demonstrated that, if you shake a bowl of mixed nuts, the biggest nuts will always rise to the top. Given that "The Donald" is leading the 2016 Republican presidential race and that the Dems can't make up their minds whether to go with Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, it seems that the Brazil Nut Effect is still influencing American Politics.

Now They Tell Me My Dog Don't Love Me!

The Chicago Tribune says dogs don't love us. They cite some so-called expert that says dogs only like us for the Pup-a-Roni snacks. The Trib says they don't miss us when we're gone and that their affection can be had for a plate of hamburger.

Here's the article.

You can read it if you want, but I think it's a lot of humbug!

Okay, I get it. We're all kidding ourselves and nobody really loves us and we're naive to think so.

Man! You people at the Tribune are really depressing and I for one refuse to accept it. I mean these guys are from Chicago, the home of Barak Obama, the man for whom "Hope and Change" is about a massive government takeover, eternal debt and being able to tell us all what's best for us and making us like it. What do you expect? Dogs are far too much like conservatives. It makes sense the Trib would do a hit piece on them - trying to undermine our confidence in man's best friend.

Okay, I know that a dog doesn't exactly have free will which is something of a pre-requisite for true love, but what they have sure is a good facsimile of the genuine article. Dogs are designed with an innate instinct to belong to a family (or pack if you want to be all stuffy and scientific). They are fiercely loyal to the pack. Our dog was absolutely a part of our family.

Eric Zorn argues a dog can be bought off if you wave a chunk of meat in front of its nose. Well, you can run a naked lady past a group of old married men and instinct will probably make 'em look. That doesn't mean they are disloyal or don't love their wives. Love is about choosing who you go home and crawl in bed with every night, not about the odd distraction. You can steal a dog, feed him well and give him a comfortable bed for the night, but if that dog is bonded to his family, he'll hike 500 miles across the wilderness to find his way home to them. It happens and how do you explain that? I don't think Lassie would do that kind of thing because she was looking for a hamburger.

All I know is this. Our beagle Suzy was my friend and she was always happy to see me. In a cold cruel world, that means a lot. If I was in trouble with everyone else in the house, Suzy was still on my side! She may not have had exactly what a psychologist would define as love for me, but it was well enough like love to suit me and I certainly loved her well enough for the both of us. She used to cry if I left her behind when I went sailing. She loved to stand on the front of the trampoline on my catamaran with the breeze flapping those big old ears. Man I miss that dog!

I wonder if that's not why God went through all the trouble of creating us humans with the power to choose. Free will has caused a world of trouble since we picked it up in the Garden of Eden. You have to wonder sometimes, though, "Is all of this misery we're going through in the crucible that is life on Earth really going to be worth it in the end?"

I'm betting it will be. Humans give their lives up all the time for those they love, for causes they love and believe in. People live their very lives for the sake of those they we love and don't count the effort wasted. Our ability to choose to unselfishly love others is incredible and powerful.

Maybe that's why Christ was willing to give up His life to save us. Maybe God wanted there to be creatures in His universe that have the power to actually love Him by choice and not just to appear to love simply because they don't have the ability to do anything else. Maybe God loved us that much that he decided all the trouble was well worth it. Seems so to me!

As to dogs, I suspect God will send Suzy back to us in heaven and the new Earth. Her whole family loved her and were with her when she died. We blew through every box of Kleenex in Dr. Spence's exam room. If I were God I certainly wouldn't want someone I loved to lose a creature they loved that much, even if that creature only seemed to love them back. I don't think He would do that to us.

Cats, I don't know about.......

I'm just sayin'

Tom

*Okay, I was kidding about the cat thing. Don't write me a bunch of nasty letters. I'm sure Bootsy really does love you and that she's just being playful when she rips up the sofa if you forget to fill up her bowl with kitty chow.

-

Honeymama, Dr. Pepper & Behavioral Science

My grandmother was a formidable woman. We cousins called her 'Honeymama' - a blending of my grandfather's name for her (Honey) and the name all our Moms called her (Mama). She was of Scots-Irish-Native American descent. I also married a woman of Scots-Irish-Native American descent too. Like my Grandpa King, I learned early on that you don't want to mess with a Scots-Irish-Indian woman. I'm just sayin'. They will strap on a kilt, pick up a shillelagh and go on a warpath on your fuzzy hindquarters.

Mabel McClure grew up in a family of 12, the oldest daughter and, of course, the one her parents most depended on as backup substitute parent. She babysat the little ones, helped with the laundry and on Saturday afternoon when the boys went off to town to the movies to watch Lash Larue and Tom Mix, she stayed home with Nanny and cleaned house. She never quite forgave her siblings for that bit of parental injustice, but she did pay them back.

As was common in those days, all the kids worked in the cotton fields from a very early age. Paw-Paw used to give them all a bag and line them up each at the head of a row. Then he announced that anyone who got to the end of their row slower than Mabel (my grandmother) would get a whipping. Paw-Paw was a tough customer; so much so that when Grandpa and Honeymama decided to get married, they had to sneak off to do it. Grandpa picked her up in his Dad's T-model for a date one Saturday night. They drove down to Itasca, Texas and found a preacher there to marry them. Rather than tell Paw Paw, my grandpa brought Mabel home that night. Everybody had told young Mr. King that Paw-Paw would fight. Rather than duke it out with his new father-in-law, they didn't tell Nanny and Paw-Paw about their marriage for two more weeks. When my Grandpa did finally fess up, he did so fully expecting to get pounded, even though Grandpa was a big strapping boy, a boxer and tough as nails. Paw Paw was about 130 pounds sopping wet, but he had a reputation as a tough and dangerous customer.

So, back in the cotton field, Honeymom knew he meant it when he threatened to whip anyone who didn't pick cotton as fast as she did. Now you'd think she'd have given her brothers and sisters a break - at least the youngest ones anyway. But, you'd be wrong. Instead, my grandmother would set a blistering pace, shoving cotton into her bag at alarming speed. And Paw Paw was true to his word according to the stories and more than one got their butts warmed for not keeping pace with their sister (my grandmother).

Then, on Saturday, Paw-Paw would load the boys all up and leave Honeymama and Nanny behind to give the house a thorough cleaning. It was unjust, no doubt about it, but he always did take her for granted. She really hated being left behind, though. I think it ruined the movies for her. She never went to the movie theater again for the rest of her life, except once in 1980 when "Coal Miner's Daughter", the story of Loretta Lynn came out. She made an exception for Loretta.

She didn't have much of a sense of humor that I remember. My Aunt once took her to see Jerry Clower in a futile attempt to get a chuckle out of her. She dismissed the witty Mr. Clower as "silly" and told Aunt Sandra she was glad she hadn't spent her own money on the tickets. She laughed at ordinary things, though and for some reason (probably something to do with cotton picking and the movies) she did seem to get a kick out of unhappy children throwing tantrums. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't a monster or anything. She'd laugh at family jokes and enjoyed get-togethers. There was nothing she liked better than having her kids and grandkids about her and she was a genius in the kitchen. We all lived for Thanksgiving and Christmas and 4th of July and Easter - those were the big ones, but any time you could get an invitation to Sabbath Dinner, you took it. She made whole wheat dinner rolls that didn't need butter, they were that good!

But I have this picture of my son, Micah throwing a little tantrum and Honeymama is standing behind him grinning from ear to ear with this impish, almost wicked little twinkle in her eye.

As long as I could remember, she always kept a wooden case with bottles of Dr. Pepper in it down in the basement. When we went to visit, we would sometimes get a bottle to drink, but not always. It was textbook behavioral conditioning. We were always well-behaved at Grandpa and Honeymama's on the chance we might get a bottle of Dr. Pepper from down in the cool dark basement. Studies have demonstrated that the most effective way to get behavior to repeat whether it's pet dogs or small children is not to hand out the rewards every time the subject performs the desired behavior. Instead reward the behavior intermittently so they never know for sure the reward will be coming. Honeymom wasn't a trained psychologist, so she did have some tells that gave away when you'd get sent down to the basement if you watched for them. It took me a while to figure out what triggered the invitation to run down to the basement and get myself a Dr. Pepper. I got pretty good at fishing for Dr. Peppers.

We were never allowed to ask for one, though so you had to be kind of sneaky about the fishing. Mom was very strict about that. We were pretty sure asking for one would not work. You apparently had to deserve one. Except nobody ever told us exactly what we had to do to deserve one. I figured out after a while that not running or being noisy in the house was one of the criteria. Letting the grownups talk was another one.

Sometimes we would go outside to avoid screwing up our chances, timing the end of our play so we were sitting in the den looking overheated and wearing our best innocent faces just before it was time to leave. Sometimes we'd sit on Grandpa's lap and listen to him tell stories and play his harmonica while the womenfolk talked in the kitchen. We had to be careful about giggling and laughing too much or we'd get grandpa in trouble right along with us.

Sometimes Honeymom would hint that the garden needed weeding and if Grandpa was out there working in the garden, we'd go out and give him a hand. We were lousy at weeding, but if we didn't do too much damage, we could usually count on a Dr. Pepper being offered. Of course, working the rows in the garden in the blistering Texas summer heat, you pretty soon began to wonder if it was worth a Dr. Pepper to put yourself through that misery. By then, however, you were afraid to quit weeding without being bidden to because since you'd invested that much sweat and sore muscles into it, you didn't want to lose what reward there was likely to be. So, you'd toil on in the sun.

The only ones of us who ever figured out how to get out of weeding were my own two boys Matt and Micah. They were 4 and 2 respectively and cute as buttons. One day, deciding they were old enough, Honeymom sent them out to "help" Grandpa in the garden. When my grandmother went out to check on them they were each halfway down a row of English peas. The vines were stripped of peas, but there weren't any peas in the buckets. The boys had been eating the raw peas as fast as they could pick them. They loved raw peas right off the vine. Honeymom sent them both inside for a Dr. Pepper so Grandpa and I could salvage at least some of the peas for cooking. My grandmother had that twinkle in her eye then too. I think she liked mischievious kids. To this day, I think I went about mooching Dr. Peppers all wrong the wrong way with her.

Her favorite child was my Dad and that man was a complete rascal. Of all his siblings, he was the one most like Honeymama's brothers and sisters. He could get away with almost anything with her. She used to send Dad to the orchard to cut a switch whenever his behavior became too outrageous. Dad's youthful career as delinquent resulted in the killing off an entire peach orchard as Honeymom wore out switches on his butt. But she still doted over him his whole life. I do believe she'd have sent him off to the movies while she did housework if he'd wanted to go.

I, unlike dear old Dad, grew up to be an upright citizen. Most kids have a period in their lives where they go over fool's hill and get in trouble or raise a little hell. I never did. I was a good boy.

I think it was the Dr. Peppers. I never figured out how to get around being "good" to earn one. So, I never quit trying. It was kind of pitiful really. My wife had the same thing with her Mamaw only it was Coca-Cola and Sheila did housework when she stayed summers with her grandmother.

In the last few years, my wife has started keeping Dr. Peppers and Cokes in those small glass bottles in the closet. Whenever I've been working around the house especially hard, she chills a couple of bottles and then brings them out of the fridge when we're done. We pop the tops together. It's a lovely sound, that bottle cap coming off with a hiss.

She gets a Coke in the small bottle. I get a Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar and bottled in Dublin, Texas as God intended.

And we sit in our chairs under the fan or out on the porch and we drink our drinks slowly, savoring the familiar taste - a good little boy and a good little girl, rewarding themselves for a job well done as though my Honeymama and her Mamaw were still watching us to make sure we behave ourselves.

© 2009 by Tom King

Old Dogs and Alpha Males

I love beagles. We had one for 13 years. Sweetest animal ever. Beagles are pack dogs and if they think you are in the pack, they are devoted to you. As far as Suzy was concerned, I was the alpha male in the pack. She was the only creature in my particular pack, however, that saw things quite that way. It's probably why I was so fond of her.
She always met me at the fence with a big old goofy grin on her face. It was nice to always have one living being in the house that was glad to see me. The whole family took it hard when she died, me probably most of all. I held her head in my hands as she died and wept.

The day she died I lost my alpha male status!!!

When I was a kid we had an ugly little mutt named Pudgy that was definitely of the lone wolf persuasion. She pumped out puppies like a factory and loved to start fights among the packs of male dogs that roamed the neighborhood. She had no loyalties to anyone except a temporary one to whoever brought out her food bowl.

With Pudgy, I was always having to work to win her respect. The day she died, I was with her too. I cried then. Not for the alpha male status I lost, but for the alpha male status I never had with her.

Finally, there was Shags, an ugly brown mix between a poodle and a duckbill platypus. This dog had dreadlocks. A neighbor once asked me if I was ever going to pick up that pile of old rags out of the yard - it was Shags in his favorite sleeping place. Shags wasn't the alpha male either. Pudgy wouldn't give him the time of day. When he finally died of old age, I sat with him all day long as he drifted away and cried my eyes out. Neither of us were alpha males, but Shags was the only dog that ever was able to share that with me.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Spy vs Spy - The Great Capitalist / Socialist Debate

The problem with the capitalist system is too many greedy chiefs, not enough productive Indians.

The problem with the socialist system is too many greedy chiefs, not enough productive Indians.

Two things destroy productivity.

1. Greed - Too many want something for no investment of time, energy and effort and believe they have a right to it. Too many people who have plenty want more simply because they can get it - it may be more money, it may be more power. It doesn't matter. It sucks the life out of a nation.

2. Lack of incentive - When greed runs rampant, the haves go out of their way to protect their position. They usually do that by preventing the have-nots from becoming haves. The socialist overlords do it by creating a system that punishes anyone who excells. The capitalist overlords do it by creating a system that sabotages competition.

The thing that drives me bats is that the great debate of our times as it's being delivered in the American media is between two groups of rich people protecting their turf!!! Sadly, whoever wins the debate, the ordinary American loses.

Ironically, the folks who are Reagan conservatives and Woodie Guthrie style Socialists are seeking pretty much the same thing - opportunity, freedom from want, public safety. If we could ever agree on how to get those things, the upper caste in this country and worldwide would collectively wet their pants. So long as they keep us all fighting their battles for them, their position is safe.

The nobility of the middle ages used to run wars once in a while just to keep the peasants in a perpetual state of fear and to thin the herd of uppity commoners. The same thing is going on now. Wealthy scions of the upper crust judiciously spend their money playing a vast game of political power chess with their peers using voters and politicians and activists as pawns and knights and rooks. I believe it's being done in cold blood, in the full knowledge that what it's all about is making sure you have so much money and so much power that God Himself couldn't knock you from your well cushioned perch at the peak of society.

It's like the Spy vs Spy cartoon in Mad Magazine. Two sides working busily at blowing each other up. Ultimately, it's all a big old game and none of us matter to them.

If somehow, ordinary, non-greedy, power-hungry people could organize and take over, the world would be a better place. The problem is that the whole structure of the world's vast right wing/left wing conspiracy spreads through the human race like some incidious spider's web. It's too big.

The only thing left for those of us who live on the outside and who genuinely don't care about being filthy rich or fantastically powerful is to wait for it. Jesus must be coming soon. I've got my thumb out....

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Women are the Key to Civilization

Every major invention, innovation and improvement in human history was created by men in order to impress women...

Without women, men would still be living naked in the forest eating berries and raw squirrel. Not a pretty picture....

For instance,

• When men began to be expected to help with the household chores - Voila! The invention of the sewing machine, the washing machine, the dishwasher and toaster oven.


• When women got tired of being dragged by the hair when they went out on dates - Voila! The Wheel!


• When women got tired of not knowing who to blame for their kids lousy behavior - Voila! Monogamy!


• When women got tired of chopping wood and stoking fire places and made men start doing that - Voila! The gas range and the coal furnace.


• When women started making men pull up the carpets and beat them - Voila! The vacuum cleaner with 200 attachments so there would never be any danger of their having to do anything remotely like beating carpets again.


• When women got tired of their husbands telling the same old stories night after night - Voila! The printing press which lead to the radio and the television and the Internet!


• When women got tired of peeing in the woods, bathing in streams and washing dishes in the yard - Voila! Indoor plumbing.

Historically, women have held us men to a high standard of behavior - or at least have through most of the last 7000 years of history. The last 30 years or so, women have been surrendering their position of authority in society. As a result, men all over America are beginning to revert to a primitive knuckle-dragging state.

Males without strong female supervision deteriorate rapidly into grunting wildebeests who smell bad and watch football all day - forgetting, of course, that the television was originally invented by men for the purpose of convincing women to live with us by offering them soap operas and game shows to keep them amused all day while we go forth to get food and animal skins. Only later did we discover you could use it to watch football too.

My advice is, continue to hold them to a high standard of behavior or they will revert to grunting boar hawgs. Make them behave themselves. Make them act like gentlemen. Require a tie when they take you out and verify whether they are, in fact, actually single. Slap 'em if they ain't. They expect it and if you don't give it to them, they think it's because you want them to be low down cheatin' hound dogs.

Men are easily confused. Let them get away with behaving like hounds and they'll never understand that you really want them to behave like knights in shining armor.

We're really easy to control. Most of us are just so glad that you all let us live in the house with you that we'll do practically anything to make sure you are happy so we don't have to sleep in the yard with the Rottweiler.

One caveat, however. We do not know what you are thinking. We do not have your ability to read minds and know what you want.

Ask us if you want something. If you can state your needs in concrete terms, especially if you give us something to do that we actually know how to do like chop wood, climb mountains or fight off packs of wild Dingos, we're there for you.

It's not hard. You just have to recognize our limitations and work around them. Women who are expert horse trainers and dog trainers often make excellent wives. They understand the use of the bit, the spur and the rolled up newspaper (as well as the curry comb, the pat on the head and the soft tone of voice).

One Warning: Some of your sisters seemed determined to undo 7000 years of work done by your mothers and grandmothers and great, great, great grandmothers over the centuries. They are your enemy. They come after your sons and husbands and fathers like some kind of feral she-wolves with no scruples at all. Poorly trained men are confused by this and may begin to exhibit negative behaviors or stray from home. You should do something about these gals. They're messing up the whole deal undoing all our training.

And a confused man is but a short step from reverting to a wildebeest.

I'm just saying....

Tom King

What it is, is Porches!

Modern life is missing something and I just happen to know what it is. I've noticed a disturbing trend in the home-building industry around here in East Texas. New communities are springing up like dollar weed in springtime all over the rural landscape around here. People move in, stay a while and then move out. They live at the mortgage lenders, negotiating for a new and better house.

They add dens and mudrooms, jacuzzi's, pools and decks. They get a second floor loft or a home office or a three car garage and they aren't happy.

I'll tell you why they're not happy. There are 10 essential things that make a bunch of houses in a pasture into a neighborhood. It's not that they all have the same color brick, the same shape roofs, the same two car garage and 8 foot cedar privacy fence. It's not that the whole neighborhood looks like a theme park - Welcome to Gray Brick and Haystack Roof Land, the happiest place on Earth.

Those aren't communities. Those are houses in a pasture. No wonder people worry about property values all the time. They move in planning to turn around and sell it when they can make a little money on it. It's little wonder nobody feels like they belong in a neighborhood. Most people don't even know more than one of their neighbors, if that many, and that's only because their dog poops in her yard and it pisses her off.

So, here are Tom's 10 Essential Ingredients for a proper Neighborhood.

1. Sidewalks. People around here are getting old. One in four East Texans will be over the age of 65 by 2010. We're having a little baby boomlet around here. All those yuppies that waited to have kids are running out of time. Kids and old people need sidewalks so they can walk, ride bicycles or cruise the neighborhood in Grandma's Hover-round. Sidewalks encourage people to get out of their houses where they can meet people.

2. The sidewalks should go somewhere. Every community should be built around something. A church, a day care center, a school, a drug store or a Little League ballfield. Every community needs a center or people living in it will find their center elsewhere. Then the community becomes a pasture full of boxes where people in boxes with wheels come to sleep at night.

3. Trees. I just love it when developers bulldoze a forest of beautiful old oaks and build row houses (starting at $200,000) with sweetgum saplings stuck in the ground in identical holes strategically placed in every yard so as to offset the identical arched front windows of every other house down the street. That's just wrong, okay? Where are you supposed to put the treehouses?

4. Chimneys that work and burn real wood - not just propane or natural gas. Fireplaces are not about the flames. They are about the gradual combustion of logs. They are about the crackle and the breakup of logs as the fire burns low. They are about the woodsmoke you smell as you huff along on your evening walk, blowing steam out your nose and breathing in the scent of oak logs burning.

5. Porches! And I DON'T mean those 3 foot wide strips of concrete in front of your door where you stand getting drowned in a rainstorm while waiting for someone to answer their doorbell. Those are NOT porches, I don't care what kind of chair or swing you set on them. A porch is not a porch unless it's got a wooden deck, a roof over it, a low railing you can see over while sitting and it has to be on the front of the house where you can see the neighbors walking by blowing steam out of their noses and breathing in the scent of oak logs burning.

6. Old people. You need old people to sit on some of those porches to watch out for the neighborhood, to keep track of the neighborhood boys who are up to no good you can bet and to wave at you and say howdy and ask, "How are you doin'" and "How's the family?" as you walk by blowing steam out of your nose and breathing in the scent of oak logs burning.

7. Water. You need a lake or a pond or something big and wet so that folks can sit and watch the sun go down and skip rocks into it. If you're not going to take the trouble to dig a hole for some water to collect in, you shouldn't be given a license to build more than one house at a time and in a neighborhood that someone else designed.

8. Individuality in design. There should be an ordinance that says to people right next to each other shouldn't accidentally walk through each other's front doors because they can't tell their houses apart. That's only for city dwellers and those folks seem to like having the same house as everybody else - makes 'em feel secure. Everybody ought to decide what their house should look like for themselves and quit allowing themselves to be bullied into a gray brick, steep roofed McMansion that looks like 300 other McMansions in this same cow pasture.

9. Terrain. Neighborhoods should not be flat. The hills should roll and the roads should wind. When it rains, the water should run in the gutter or bar ditch deep enough for a 7 year old to float his boat down the street for at least 3 blocks before it goes over the mini-Niagra Falls and sinks in the pond (see item #7).

10. Banjo players. Now this "essential" is admittedly controversial, but I maintain that every neighborhood needs a "colorful character". Where better to find such colorful characters than amongst the ranks of banjo players. They should give them free houses, just to add some local color to the neighborhood. They could cruise the banjohangout website looking for likely candidates. I myself could be persuaded....

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Bored? You've Got to Be Kidding

I was cruising my bulletin board on MySpace and found several messages from 20 somethings claiming to be bored. How is that possible? Who has the time to be bored?

The world is huge. We have surrounding us so many things to do and see that one lifetime is not enough to do and see it all. It remains for God to grant us immortality for us to have even a chance to be bored.

From where I sit, I see a shelf with some 250 books, each requiring about 3-6 hours to read if you read very fast. In front of me is a television hooked to a satellite dish with 150 channels. Below the TV is a drawer containing some 75 DVDs and a shelf with more video tapes than that. There are 3 shelves stuffed with more than 100 books on tape, a drawer full of CD's and another bookshelf with about 100 books in it downstairs. In the shed I have 5 boxes of audio tapes and some boxes of books my wife made me put there because she says we don't have room for them all in the house. I have a shelf in my closet with 15-20 board games, card games and then there's the video game channel on my satellite dish. I have about 10 video games on my computer (there are two laptops and two desktops in the house and 5 television sets). Each game would take about 5-10 hours to finish just one run through and some of them offer dozens of different scenarios. I can download games for free from the Internet if I run out of games or borrow some from one of the kids. I have a music program someone gave me that lets me compose music on my keyboard and print out sheet music once I'm done. I can transfer videos to DVD's on my DVD recorder, copy DVD's, create photo and video programs on my computer, turn audio tapes into DVD's and Photoshop my photographs so I look like I've lost 50 pounds and grown my hair back - how cool is that!!!

I can paste my head on Johnny Weissmueller's body and print out fake Tarzan posters with me in the starring role! I can find clips from old movies on-line and watch them. I can go to You-tube and watch the next generation ride skateboards off of roofs and land astraddle of a steel handrail, insuring they will not likely procreate - which may prove Darwin correct after all! How much fun is that.

We have 5 guitars, a fiddle, a banjo, a dulcimer, piano, 2 bodhrans, an alto recorder, penny whistle, jaw harp, a kazoo and a bag full of harmonicas, all of which I need to practice on if I'm ever going to learn to play them. I've got two astronomical telescopes and the pieces of one I haven't finished building yet, a pair of binoculars and a bird book and a pair of hawks that live in a tree across the street to watch. I have pieces of cherry wood a friend gave me and a Dremel moto-tool for carving the engraved wooden box I'm building for my wife. There's a fire in my fireplace and a refrigerator and shelves full of food and a cabinet with about 20 recipe books in it so that I can make all kinds of really good stuff to eat. There's a fresh loaf of homemade honey wheat bread I made last night.

I've got a catamaran with a broken rudder I need to finish repairing so I can go sailing. I've got two canoes and two sailboards that need to be cleaned for the season and taken out on the lake or down to the river for a paddle. I've got 3 bicycles that need to some maintenance so I can go riding with my grandkids. My granddaughter is downstairs working on her homework and probably will be upstairs soon wanting me to help with her latest last minute essay.

I have a giant plastic box full of photos and negatives in the closet that I am trying to scan into my computer so I can organize them and make photo memory books for each of my kids. I have a book I've written, and one my wife has written that I need to sell to a publisher (which could take me writing some 50 letters before I even get a nibble). I have another two books I'm writing, four websites I manage and need to update, 4 e-mail boxes to tend to and a book of songs I'm working on for our youth group that needs some new songs added to it. I also write 4 weblogs and manage two MySpace pages.

I'm writing 7 grants in the coming 3 weeks and creating a 5 year budget for a wildlife refuge expansion project. AND I HAVEN'T DONE MY TAXES YET!!!!!

It's Sabbath afternoon and I'm sitting in a wonderfully comfortably La-Z-Boy recliner by a warm fire on a rainy day with my family all around and I could sure use a nap (see above).

I'm almost 53 years old and I know I'm not going to live long enough to get everything done that I want to do, much less what I have to do.

I have the entire Internet full of amazing stuff to see and do and read and what do I see on the bulletin board but a bunch of 14-28 year olds whining about being bored?

Man I wish I could trade places with you guys. Then you would only have a few years till you were dead and I'd have time and energy to do all the fun stuff I want to do, but will probably run out of time to do.

Now get up off your butt and go find something fun to do for crying out loud!!!!!!

I don't want to hear anything more about anybody who is under 75 and not paralyzed from the neck down being bored!!!

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

The Need to belong...

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What different tongues we speak among our own tribes.
- Everybody has a language that is unique within his village.
The village may be aboriginal, Abysynthian, or absurd
- But each speaks its own little set of coded signals
Like red ants do when they smell each other
- To see whether or not whoever it is belongs
. on this particular anthill.
Humans, I guess, are just a little more auditory than ants,
- So, we slip in little subtle verbal cues
That only we - the initiates of this little circle that we move in - know.
- Tones of voice, tricks of speech or accent
That way we can sniff out others, and push them out,
- Away from our fledglings.

I think that insecure people do it more than the all the rest.
As if the act of excluding outsiders makes the insiders more
- Inside than they would be without the rules that exclude.
Dear God, how we need to belong!!
- Did you do that? Did you make us that way?

My mate says you made a mistake, God, in giving us all that free will.
- She has a point. It leaves our fledglings at terrible risk.
They may move on without us and choose some path
- That brings them hurt.
They might change their accents, eschew the code,
- Ignore the warning signs
They could become different from those who remain
- In our safe little worlds
They could think things and do things
- That take them beyond the borders of the places
Where they have grown up.
- And, for that matter, so might we.
So, we code our language, habits, joys,
- To keep out, people that we don't know, but probably should.
And to keep in those we do know only too well
- And cannot bear to be parted from.

How sad!

I love language and code words and customs and habits,
- But as something that defines us rather than separates us.
Oh, what we miss for the sake of safety and the snug security
- Of the anthill or nest or village.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King