Teaching your kids to be dinosaurs

Waiting for the bus my daughters and I read the papers. When we can afford it we revel in the New York Times. (A friendly delivery man knows we like the Globe too and drops us one when he has a spare.) Lately, though, it's just the incredible shrinking Hartford Courant - our state's capitol city paper, emerging from rounds and rounds of buyouts and sales and layoffs.

Reading the entire paper in 10 minutes has its advantages, I guess...fewer to take to the curb. Less put into landfills. But half the front section seems like police report transcripts. Be afraid, it seems to intone - be very afraid. We talk about that: what's reported, how it's easier to copy a police report than to analyze complex records and events, how the paper we hold in our hand represents something that is not proportional to reality.

So you see my kids have a steady diet of news. And commentary about news.

Maybe I am teaching my kids to be dinosaurs.

Cooking dinner recently, one of my daughters stated a nearby town is poorer than ours. Really? I queried. Yes, I've been there, came the confident reply. So I explained different ways to measure community wealth and resources. They quickly grasped the notion of a Grand List, adding up all the taxable property and dividing by the number of people. We have a house, we have a car; they could relate.

Later, I thought ruefully that of course my clever middle school children could grasp the basic elements of a municipal budget, drilled into me as a 21-year-old reporter covering a town. But there are fewer and fewer people know how to report on these things, or opportunities to read about them.

Recently I was in a panel discussion reflecting on whether our current state of media - massive corporate ownership, diminishing reporting and investigative resources - is a chicken or an egg problem. Or has a chicken or egg solution. Do we as a society expect and seem to like such shallow reporting because that's all we get? Is that what we get because that is what over time we have shown we want? Is that what we want because it's all we know? Or all we have time for?

I remember feeling from my own reporting days that I was often just writing into a well. You work your ass off, break a fabulous story, and no one cares or acts on it and nothing changes. That's a good part of why I left journalism, and now, after a lot of years of trying in other ways to change the world, I can see how even the best reporting got to be part of a much larger and more concerted campaign. You need the analysis, and the content in that 30+ inches of unbroken copy, but you've also got to call out the important parts and hit people over the head with it. Again and again and again.

There are actually some good things about the incredible shrinking Courant. I do see they are calling out information in new and visually appealing ways. Good! What's still lacking, though, is analysis, and any context. How about a police blotter that also tells us whether crime - by any measure! - was up or down or the same as in recent weeks and years.

Maybe this is one of those things that will work itself out with time. Perhaps the upsurge in blogs and online news will fill the gap - although I am afraid I agree with those who point out that online communities too often consist of people who agree with each other or are interested in narrow and specific topics (left-handed dentists, Buddhist parents.) They're not learning about things in their own community and they are not talking to anyone with a different opinion.

I cling to the notion that as an informed citizens we should have a grasp of certain facts and processes and benchmarks. What's our tax rate, how do we compare to other places, how are we educating our kids and taking care of our seniors, and so many more. And I haven't found a better place we should be able to look to for that than our media.

Hundreds of words for snow

I don't know it it's true, the ubiquitous urban myth that Eskimos, tied to and living off their land, have 100 different words for snow.

Lately I have been feeling that way about leaves.

I am still raking, and now, on the weekend where I have time off from work and my daughters are at their dad's, I am determined to finish up.

Today and yesterday the leaves are very damp and even wet. Tarps weigh many times their usual weight as I drag them to he riverbank. I have to switch hands, feel myself develop Popeye forearms.

Raking them is different too. My yard is not completely level and in some places leaves have gathered in small depressions; here they are packed and wet. In other places, under the eaves of the house, there are pockets of leaves that are entirely dry, fluffy, still colorful and easy to rake.

Most of the yard now has been cleared at least once, so when I go back over and sweep three or four inches worth of these damp leaves, it feels good.

Home Depot Illimunati

I used to joke that if the Illuminati does indeed exist, their greatest accomplishment is Home Depot.

I thought of that again this morning as I was taking leaves. My home office window looks out into my lovely yard, graced with numerous enormous maple and beech trees. Unchecked, leaf accumulation gets to a foot or more of wet, packed, smelly mouldy matter by spring. This year I am resolved to keep up with it, and get out there to clear small patches, even though the trees above are still half filled with trembling, turning leaves.

Weeks ago I was rather stressed, eying my finances (which do NOT include leaf removal) along with the ticking by of the season and what I know to be the massive job ahead. I've had some success in moderating the stress by simply acknowledging making note of it and letting it go; also, though, by not leaving it all till the end, and taking advantage of every free half hour on a nice day to enjoy the air and revel in the exercise.

And so I was out there this morning, and I remembered my old joke about the Home Depot Illuminati.

It goes something like this:

If indeed there is a giant powerful international cabal, intent on seizing and holding control of our political and economic systems, what better success could they hope to have than Home Depot?

Think about what Home Depot successfully promotes.

If you are a homeowner, it is your single largest and greatest investment. If you are not, you are supposed to aspire and work toward it. After all, the greatest form of middle class welfare given the mortgage interest tax deduction.

Well, this, your home, is in constant and unending need of improvement. Even if it isn't actually falling down around you, you are continually told - through trillions of dollars of very well developed glossy commercials; entire sections of the newspaper - that is needs to be brighter, prettier, glossier, larger. Marble. Stainless steel appliances. Skylights! Renovated kitchens!

If you even halfway listen to this constant drumbeat you can spend every spare cent (hell, go into debt if there's none to spare) and every spare minute improving your home. Otherwise you are worthless! Inadequate!

As Betty Friedan said about housework, home improvement now expands to fill all available time.

So, back to the Illuminati part. If the goal is a populace that doesn't care about politics, or public policy, or how society invests its resources, what better way to achieve it than this? (Or doesn't have time to care; maybe the same thing.)

Cause or effect? Kinda doesn't matter.

I've seen Michael Moore's Sicko since developing this theory and think he's got it even more right. Americans are overworked, overextended, and feeling fundamentally really vulnerable about the increasing disconnect between the lifestyle we are told to want, the actual cost of living (even without plasma tvs), juxtaposed against real earnings; and the fact that for many years we have experienced no political hope or sense of our own power and effectiveness. In France, the government is afraid of the people, Moore concludes; here, the people are afraid of the government.

I do have to say, I almost can't bear to watch any more news. The unavoidable economic black hole combined with the possibility (however remote) of a McCain/Palin administration is almost too much to bear. (Although I do feel increasingly free to prepare to celebrate Tuesday.)

However: I have decided to enjoy raking the leaves this year. I do not have to bag them, instead throwing tarps full off a steep hill that leads to a riverbank. That's a kind of wild, joyous feeling in itself. It makes a wonderful, massive compost pile, and the kids love to jump in them. And I can use the mental time to muse, reflect on work and other things, dream up barely read blog posts.