What Are We...

...becoming or have already become?

I think I noted that on November 22, I saw nary an article on the Kennedy assassination, not a single one.  Well, OK......

But on the way to class this AM, two different radio stations had something like "On this date in history."  Both, as the lead, was "Frosty the Snowman first appeared on CBS" or whatever network it was.  Neither mentioned, not a word at all, that this is the 76th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Maybe our entry into the Second World War isn't as important as Frosty, maybe.  Maybe not everyone is high on history like I am.  But maybe we've reached the abyss??????

I sometimes wonder who reads this blog.  I generally get 50 or so hits/views, sometimes more than that.  I think my highest was last summer with one post getting more than 100.  Good.  I also wonder why some of my posts show up on radio shows or in newspaper editorials/op-eds a week or two afterward.

Last weekend I posted about history and the dangers of not knowing it.  This AM on one of the radio talk shows, a guest whose name I don't remember, talked of the current use of language.  It was, I think, akin to my suggestions as to the use (misuse or abuse?) of history.  Just as not knowing our history allows others to co-opt it, to define our history and therefore us, language can be co-opted, too.  If terms are allowed to be used in ways that are dishonest or, at least, disingenuous, debates and discussions are one-sided.  Take a term that is bandied about far too often, "fascist."  It's become de rigueur among many to call names.  If one disagrees with, say college students, that one is labeled a "fascist."  I wonder if many of these students even know what a fascist is/was?  Since when is disagreement an invitation to use the term "fascist?"  Were then either Hamilton or Jefferson, depending on one's view, a fascist?  After all, they disagreed and vehemently so.

Perhaps less dire, though, is our haphazard use of terms like "icon" and "classic."  I heard someone say that of a moderately popular television show of some years ago.  Maybe the person talking really liked the program; that doesn't necessarily make it a "classic."  For that matter, is John Conyers, among others, really an "icon" of the civil rights movement?  I guess that depends on one's definition.  Surely he was an integral individual in civil rights.  He played an important role.  But when I think of "icons" of the civil rights movement I immediately think of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, etc.  That doesn't mean others, even nameless folks who did unrecorded deeds, haven't also been instrumental.  I think tossing around words like "classic" and "icon" so willy-nilly cheapens the concepts.  Not everything that a lot of people liked is a classic and not everyone involved in a movement, regardless of roles, is an icon.

Sort of funny, to me at least, was this, perhaps in the same vein.  I walked into a school where I formerly taught and was greeted by a former colleague.  He addressed me as "the venerable......"  I smiled and later wondered if he knows what the word means.  I've also been into that same place and been called "the legend."  But I'm not sure if that is complimentary or not!  I guess there are worse things to be called.

Yesterday, I had a nice enough run in the AM.  I am combating some piriformis/sciatic problems, but they appear to be, however slowly, improving.  Then, last night I went out for an evening run.  I was a bit tired and maybe concerned about my piriformis/sciatic difficulties.  But I was committed and off I went.  By the time we finished, it was dark.  (Fortunately, the trail we ran is smooth, hilly but smooth, so the dangers of tripping and falling were minimal.)  It was a great run.  It was so pretty out there, with no real pain either!  And this AM, again in the dark before class, I had another beautiful run, this time for a little different reason.  It snowed today.  Nothing stuck, but the flakes were like big feathers, soft and floating in the air.  Neither time did the cold bother me/us at all.

BTW, how do you get down off an elephant?  You don't; you get down off a duck.