Thoughts

It was the lights. These are what drew me to the idea of taking a trip to Las Vegas. I pictured neon casino signs lighting the night sky, painting the streets below varied and changing colors. To be honest, that's about as much as I knew of Las Vegas, never having been there and seeing only images on television or online. As I experienced Las Vegas over the past four days, however, the most glaring omission from my mental picture became especially clear on Friday evening: the people. Throngs of people walked the "strip"--the name for Las Vegas Boulevard, where the major hotels and other attractions reside--alongside my friend and me as we explored the area. The only other places I had seen so many people in such a widespread space were other major cities: New York and Boston, in particular. Lights and people aside, my friend and I enjoyed some of the attractions of the city. The most memorable, for me, was the Titanic exhibit, where a huge section of the ship's hul...

 Language and the way it is communicated are expressions of power. When we hear someone speaking differently than what we are accustomed to, we see it as an error that needs to be addressed. In an education class, I remember learning about "BICS" (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and "CALP" (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency"), the former being language used during informal conversation--such as when talking to a friend--and the latter being academic language that someone would use in a formal educational setting. Someone who speaks using BICS can also be perceived as uneducated, while someone using the academic CALP can appear intelligent. With that said, it does not seem far-fetched to argue that there can also be a BICS and CALP in the way we speak (intonation, etc.), and not just in the words we use. Upspeak (the tonal lift at the end of a sentence that makes a statement sound like a question) and vocal fry (the closest analogy ...

On November 16 th , 1915, Harry Haiselden, a physician at German-American Hospital in Chicago, called a press conference to announce that he would not perform corrective surgery on a newborn boy with a fatal birth defect. Aside from the fatal missing anal canal, the “Bollinger” child had no right ear, no neck, a deformed rib cage that led to a caved chest, dead nerves on the right side of its body, and a deformed shoulder, among other abnormalities. Haiselden had justified his decision on both humanitarian and what was and is called eugenic grounds: not only would the child face a miserable life in an indifferent institution, but it would be a burden– even a threat– to its family and to society. 1 While many today might condemn Haiselden, as many did when he made the announcement, his statements would be echoed by many through the 1920s, and represented a mix of two significant movements in the early twentieth century United States: progressivism and eugenics. As I hope to show, thes...

I don't blame you if you think me strange for the following behavior, but I was really in the mood to play chess when I surmised the following idea. In fact, it was more of a small experiment. I printed a sign that read "Want to play chess?" and then went with my newly-purchased chess set to a book store nearby. I bought coffee in the cafe of the store, then sat at a fairly visible table. I then set up my sign under my chess board so it could be seen by anyone who happened to look, and then started reading a book I brought. I guessed that it would be too socially risky to approach a stranger to play chess, even if there is a sign inviting anyone to play, but I hoped I was wrong. Without looking too conspicuous, I glanced to see if anyone was interested. There wasn't. I saw one man hesitate to sit down when he saw the sign, but then he sat two tables away. Whether no one was truly interested-- which is what I felt happened-- or no one wanted to take the r...

A new soldier-- we'll call him "Tony" to keep the soul anonymous-- was drafted by the United States Army to fight one of the most difficult battles of his life. At once, this young, untried nestling was thrust into the fray, surrounded by the war machine at every glance and angle, with little more than sticks and stones at his disposal. It was not as though his commanders had not given him the appropriate fighting implements with which to engage the enemy. No, his resources were always known to him, offering to him the ostensibly glaring weaponry, useful for any pitched battle, large or small. It was, instead, a lack of experience with such tools that left him the impression that there was, in fact, nothing finer and more useful in a campaign than the selfsame sticks and stones he now held in his hands. Convinced of such absurdity, this soldier's nights were filled with perplexed stares into the darkness, wondering why he fared so poorly in battle. It w...

When I went camping last week, I met an older gentleman who teaches two leadership classes at a local high school. To hear him talk about his experiences brought back memories, to be sure. Last year, in fact, was the first year in quite some time that I did not teach leadership myself. In the four years I taught leadership, I experienced the uniqueness of a class in which students organize and execute school-wide events, with teacher guidance. I found a few unpublished posts about a few of those events, found below. Post #1 My leadership class hosted its first rally yesterday. It didn't go horribly, but it didn't go well, either. The best I can say is that this year's first rally was more organized and enjoyable than last year's first rally. On the whole, the games went smoothly, once they got started; but the issue was the contestants' confusion about how to play. We used demonstrators, but it didn't help much when it came to the contestants themselves...

It has been years since I last experienced sleeping in a tent outdoors, but I recently returned from a camping trip in Watsonville, near the ocean, with a group of high school (or former high school) students and other adults connected to a local church. In the process, I met kind people and named my car; but what was perhaps most novel about the trip was the intersection of nature, civilization, and culture. Indeed, one of the first things we learned on arriving was that our campground was stationed next to an agribusiness-sized strawberry patch, pickers hard at work and a taco truck there to serve them, all within walking distance of the ocean and a short drive to a shopping center. To see these shades of American culture juxtaposed like this was at once unique, quaint, and telling. It was like reading The Grapes of Wrath and watching an episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark," all on a smart phone. After arriving, setting up our tents, and enjoying the beach for a time, ...