Sunday, April 27, 2014

Vampires … Shmampires!

Vampires … Shmampires!

How much of this vampire nonsense do we have to put up with?

The whole thing started with a decent novel by John Polidori called, are you ready for this, The Vampyre.  Published in 1819.  Then along came Bram Stoker with Dracula in 1897.  And that Dracula took the ridiculous old folk stories and superstitions to a new height of the absurd.

Now I gotta say these guys could write.  I mean they could really write in a style that just pulls the reader into their darkest thoughts.  And before movies and, worse yet, television and even worse than that a huge waste of resources on modern digital special effects.
In my mind though the work of Mary Shelly and her novel Frankenstein is the best written of that whole horror genre.  Shelly’s prose is just wonderfully done.

Still, back to vampires – blood sucking chacaburas and other such brain compost has gotten wa-a-ay out of hand.  Vampires that are beautiful and fall in love and stop sucking blood because their lu-huv-vy-huvy love love is so strong.  And they become some kind of born-again humanists who fight any number of new baddies that are supposedly even worse.

On the flip-side, I love the superhero comic book genre.  Superman and Batman, Aquaman, etc..  Those comic books are what actually taught me to read.  And the supervillians in those superhero comics were actually believable to me (as a kid).
I mean those bad guys were evil and crooks and baddy-bad-bad without all the bloody horror stuff – which I hated as a kid. 

Those superheros and supervillians were so over-the-top, even as a boy I knew none of it was real.  I just thought it was cool.  I never put a towel around my neck and jumped off the roof of the house thinking I could fly.  Maybe my imagination was stunted, but I wasn’t stupid.  I did want to be super-strong and see through girls clothes, but I never had any desire to bite somebody on the neck so I could become immortal and turn into a bat.

Later in life, kind of biting a pretty girl’s neck did become inviting and a nice experience, but I wasn’t trying to … like … break the skin and suck blood.  Actually that never crossed my mind – really.  I have bitten my own tongue and other dumb moves where I have had to taste my own blood.  Blood, to me, is not very tasty.  I find it mostly not something I could ever want to have to do on a regular basis. 

Years ago, when I ate meat (which I haven’t done for decades and decades) (now, don’t judge … I am very healthy, have been all my life and for over half of it, I haven’t eaten meat) (live with it) - - - Anyway, when I did eat meat, I was always a well-done kind of guy.  Pink, bloody meat really was not my first option.

So we have our handsome, beautiful lovey-doveys running around, living forever and doing good, these days.  The origin of the super-di-duper evil villains, such as Dracula and Vlad the Impaler , has gone all cutesy and those guys are now the good guys.  What!

I hate that! 

Did you ever read up on Vlad the Impaler?  There was real person who is sometimes credited with starting the whole Count Dracula thing.  And ole Vlad was beyond evil.  That guy was truly truly nasty and nobody made him up – he was very real..  It would be almost impossible to invent a fictional villian who was that bad.

But with all the vampire nonsense coming out these days, writers are doing their best.  Even Hannibal Lector is a cutey-pie next to ole Vlad.  They’re all trying to out-bad the bad guys by turning the old bad guys into good-guys.  Hollywood even tried to pull that off with nasty Hannibal. 

Can you say, “retread?”

So I say, “Lay off the vampire schtick.  They have their coffins to roll around in.  Leave ‘em there.”



{{All of my in-depth research was done on Wikipedia.}}

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014
Please check out my new book Drawing Blind (Learn to draw without looking) at:
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Sunday, April 20, 2014

The Good Teacher (Part One)

The Good Teacher …
(Part One)

Even before I get into this topic, I must state  … oh about … three caveats. 

One: I am not holding myself up to be any kind of a prime model of a teacher or teaching.  I have done the best that I could for thirty years.  My track record for successful students is quite long, but I am certain I made many mistakes too.  For those students I may have failed, in some manner, I heartfully apologize.

Two:  Upon reading this, I can just hear hundreds of excellent teachers adding all kinds of their own addendums.  And, they would be correct, of that I am certain.

Lastly:  In those thirty years of teaching I have seen and been a part of a major paradigm (shift, change, upheaval) in education.  Huge! Major! Changes …

But first, before even approaching all those HUGE changes in later blogs, one thing I have learned is in this Good Teaching Blog: Part One.

If you want any person’s respect, and you can’t expect respect unless you extend respect, I believe you must learn that person’s name.  Truly connect with that name and that person on a personal level, by tacking that name into your cerebral cortex.  Individuals who say, “I’m terrible with names.”, to my mind, are people who are mentally lazy and have very low quotients of empathy and high quotients of ego.

I have worked with and taught many children and adults with mental health issues, mental disabilities, some quite severe.  Autistic persons, adults and children, those with Downs Syndrome – every single one of them knows their own name.  They know who they are, they respond to a word that is as deeply attached to their existence as their own heartbeats.  Plus nearly every one of them with whom I have worked, will remember the names of others who have treated them with respect.  Even after as much as several years of no contact with those persons.

One conclusion I have drawn from that part of my experience, in life and teaching, is that names, the name of every person is important.  So I learned to mentally file that under “stuff that is really, really important.” 

The look in a young person’s eyes the second or third time you address them, using their name, is a flash of morning sunlight.  “He knows me.  He knows who I am.  I’m me, not just another kid.”  The sense of validation this gives a young person can upgrade the whole teacher-student relationship and learning and self-confidence increases by factors of ten.

This knowledge and connection with the student also allows the teacher to infer, “I know who you are and I expect you to behave properly.”  Saying, “Stop that!” when a student is carving into a desktop, is not nearly as effective as saying, “Johnny, stop carving up that desk.  You’re gonna be in here sanding that down for hours after school.”  First, he knows you know him precisely, secondly because he knows you know this his deeper emotions will be that he has disappointed you personally.

Johnny now knows you know who carved the desk.  You will remember who carved the desk and if there is a bad things I have done tally sheet in your head, he’s now on it.  If you have developed that empathetic validation of him, with him, he will not want to stay on that list.  You have now not only stopped one instance of bad behavior, you have set the ground-work for an improved thought and decision making process in that young man’s life.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T begins with giving r-e-s-p-e-c-t and that begins with that person to person identity validation. 

Learn their names and always use their names when addressing them.

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014
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Sunday, April 13, 2014

Have You Ever Held A Tiny Bird

Have You Ever Held A Tiny Bird?

Just a bit of fluff.  A tiny wisp of feathers with a beating heart, pleading terrified dots for eyes – staring into your own heart.  Somehow connecting directly to your own soul, this mote of life wants only to escape your cupped hands.  And yet you must hold it safe and uninjured long enough to move it to a place where you can safely release it.

This has happened to me several times.  A tiny bird gets into my house or office or, once, in a School Library.  The bird is completely confused.  Mystified to find itself in this place where the open sky is not up, in fact there doesn’t seem to be any open sky.  Some kind of a cloud, in the bird’s thinking, that is hard and every time it tries to fly up through it, it hurts.

“Oh, look a patch of blue,” thinks our tiny friend.  Whonk!  “What the ??”  As a bird, glass is a foreign concept.   A window just looks like the space between trees, or branches … maybe.

Next, there are number of big lumbering creatures trying to catch it.  Chasing it around, confusing it even more.  “Over there!” one of them shouts.  “Get a chair!”  “It’s on the light!”

All that human shouting probably just sounds like dogs barking, or bears grumbling.  It would take a look inside a bird’s mind, to know what a bird’s thinking.  A bird brain … I guess.  Which sadly human’s do not have the capability of doing.  Although when trying to capture, or help, a bird trapped inside a human habitation, an awful lot of humans seem to get kind of bird brained.

For the safety of the bird though, I think it’s pretty important to try and get them back outside.  Yet, they definitely don’t want to be gotten.  And their skills at being illusive are quite amazing.  Generally it does take a couple of people.  One person to distract the bird and the other to sneak up on the little guy when his/her attention is on the other person.

It has been amazing to me how many big ole people are so afraid of the little guys though.  Like this half an ounce of feathers has any real capacity to be of even the slightest physical threat.  Believe me, in my experience mosquitos are far more of a threat than any sparrows and such, I’ve had to deal with.

So one time I was in a school library on the first really nice day of Spring.  A couple of the doors to the outside were open and a sparrow (I’m pretty sure it was a sparrow) flies into the main room.  The librarian and the teachers went into full scale panic.  Most of the students (kids) thought it was funny.

Adults all either running around trying to get away from this creature that was smaller than your hand, or actually trying to swat it with brooms or yardsticks.
Sure it might poop on your head, but I’ve had that happen in a city park.  You get a wet cloth and wipe it off.  It’s not like your skin is gonna melt.  It’s bird poop, not acid. 

So one of these teachers calms down enough to help me corner the little guy and I manage to scoop him up in my hands.  Now he’s terrified, of course.  If some giant got ahold of you in their hands, you’d be terrified.  So naturally he’s trying to use all the tools of self-defense he’s got, which consists of his beak.  He’s pecking and pecking at my fingers.

I took him outside and let him go … of course.

But I’ll never quite forget it, because I could barely feel it.  I’ve had sea crabs pinch me harder than that.  Tiny, tiny sea crabs as small as a penny with more strength than that tiny sparrow.  He weighed almost nothing at all.  It was as though he was made from sunlight.  Less mass than a dust bunny.

As he darted off into the sky, all I could think was that there was some kind of gift he had given me.  Such a marvelous piece of evolutionary genius and I had, for a just a few moments, held it in my hands.

It gives me pause concerning our own lives ….


Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014  Hartfield, Va.
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Sunday, April 6, 2014

Lion Taming

If It’s So Dangerous, Why Do You Do It? (Lion Taming)

This is a question I am often asked when I go into the cage to tame lions. 
“If it’s so dangerous, why do you do it?”
Because at any moment, at the whim of the lions, I could be killed.  One paw swipe -dead.

That’s what makes it more than exciting, it is life and death at the same instance – the same instant.  And, the fact the I, a wimpy little guy, can make lions, big, carnivorous and horribly dangerous, do what I want them to do.  It’s a feeling of power, like a Roman Emperor or Caesar.

On the serious side; I am not a lion tamer.  Actually I don’t have any desire to tame lions.  I prefer my lions untamed and somewhere far away, like … I don’t know … Africa?  Unless I am in Africa, then I think I’d like all the lions somewhere else … say Cleveland, Ohio?  I’ve lived in Cleveland, if all the lions were roaming around there, I’d be concerned for the safety of the lions.

They love their tailgate bar-b-que parties in Cleveland.
“Hey?  What ‘cha got on the grill?”
“Lion.”
“Yeah?  Cool.  What time does the game start?”

Still, it’s the same question – the same thought pattern.  Danger should equal, or cause, avoidance.  In just about every other higher brain functioning species, it does.  Dogs, cats, even alligators avoid what they perceive as a dangerous threat to their lives.  Only humans go straight after danger.  Well, some do.  The adrenalin junkies, etc..  Thrill seekers.  Put a house cat on a roller-coaster ride and it will loose its mind.

To me the question is not one of danger, but fear.  Does danger = fear?  Not for everyone, it doesn’t.  I think it’s pretty much impossible not to feel fear.  The physical monkey brain just sees, or feels, a threat and wham! – fear.  Like any muscle (and the human brain is actually a modified muscle) I think you can train the brain.  If it’s possible to train a lion, why not the human brain?

The lion is condtioned to fear the human trainer, and his whip or whatever device he uses (cattle prod?) to create that fear.  The lion does not think deeply enough, as deeply as a human is capable of thinking anyway, and so his fear controls him.  Even though he could do in that trainer without much effort at all.  According to evolution, the lion doesn’t really have a choice.

A human being, a lion tamer, does have a choice.  It is the fear that keeps the lion tamer alive when he is in the cage with the lion.  Yes, the lion’s conditioned fear of the trainer, but also the trainer’s fear of the lion capabilities – the awareness of the lion’s wildness and unpredictability.  The lion tamer follows a time tested method of taming the lions, never forgetting for a single instant that a mistake could cost him his life.

So why do it?  Why do things that are so dangerous?  For one thing the lion has been, essentially, driven to a state mental illness.  By repeated mistreatment and psychological attacks on his natural state of lion awareness, the lion has become subservient to his own fear.  Beat down, courage collapsed, wildness destroyed. 

And that is why.  That is what doing dangerous things is all about.  To make the determination of choosing to be either the lion tamer or the lion. 

I ride a motorcycle.  My motorcycle is my main form of transportation.  Two reasons: one, I enjoy it.  The sense of not being in a car where I am surrounded by metal, on four wheels, leaning away from the curves, sitting in a chair.  Like I am at home watching TV.  To my mind, driving a car is like watching other people and places pass by on TV. 

On the bike I lean into the curves.  There just seems to be a lot more road when you’re on a bike.  The line of travel on a narrow road is straighter – or it’s possible to take a straighter line, which is simply more fun.  In traffic you accelerate out of lights, intersections faster (less mass to overcome inertia). 

That’s the main thing; motorcycling is just fun and more mentally interesting.

The second reason:  it is dangerous.  Riding a motorcycle, in most places, rural or urban, is dangerous and nobody should take a different view.  It is foolish to think otherwise.  One difference with the lion analogy to motorcycle riding, is that the lions are not afraid of you.  The lions, or cars, think nothing of taking you out.  Half the time they don’t even see you – at least that’s what they always tell the Highway Patrol after they hit a biker, “I didn’t see him.” 

Bullshit? They weren’t paying attention and they didn’t care.  But then that’s a whole ‘nother blog.

I love to fly in airplanes.  I especially like the takeoffs and landings.  Especially, especially the landings.  I can’t really say why.  At one time I was absolutely phobic about flying. 

Neither of these things are thrill seeking things.  The thrill, and there is a thrill in doing them – I admit that – is that the danger is seemingly indigenous to the activity itself, but upon closer analysis is really not dangerous much at all.

Somehow, somewhere, I can’t totally remember or determine, I decided that fear did equal danger and that I liked that!  To be honest, I am assuredly not an adrenaline junkie. 

One activity I enjoy is big water kayaking.  Ocean kayaking.  This is not a fast sport.  Paddling a long boat in the average waves is slower than walking (when you’re my age anyway).  But it can be dangerous, very dangerous if you miscalculate.  You have to know your limits and be prepared for all kinds of things that can happen.  Storms coming up out of, seemingly, nowhere.  Wind, tides, currents.

In a twinkling, out on big water, you can be miles from where you need to be.  Exhausted, dehydrated, over-exposed.  You can die and it would be slow and very miserable.

Big water kayaking is not an adrenaline fueled sport.  It is more like marathon running.  And marathon running can also be very dangerous. 

So in many instances danger does not immediately equal fear.  The danger can creep up on you, like a deadly snake.  You have no idea it’s there and whap! you’re bit (instant fear!).  This is where the training comes in; the brain (lion) training.  The acceptance of danger as a part of life and a big part of why you might actually want to step into that lion cage, once in a while.

Often a reasonable step-by-step learning period is required to pursue some things that do carry some potential risks.  And these steps lead to and promote greater skills in that activity and hence reduce the actual danger(s).  I’m saying here you can’t be stupid about this stuff.  But you can begin to break down the bars of the fear cage.

Of course, I know this is not a new concept I am relating.  Many others have written and spoken about “being ruled by fear”.  And, how being ruled by fear can corrode your quality of life.  All that being true, in my mind.  My thought here is how often there is a tendency to fool ourselves into being afraid when it is only danger we perceive, without analyzing that danger.  Determining if that particular danger is actually a true threat or not.

To me it mostly comes down to; it is not a matter of how much fear a person is willing to accept, but if they are willing to extend enough effort to find the courage to overcome that fear.  

Fear is natural, courage is acquired.  

For me, I would rather seek the freedom of courage found in danger, even though some would call it foolish, than live in a cage of fear.

Peace and live joyously,

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014 Copyright

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