Farm News 03-18-07

Sunday morning, after chores

Daylight Savings Time

Has anyone seen any solid research which shows that Daylight Savings Time saves anything? In Anthony, Kansas, when I was younger than I am now, I often had to attend the big summer tent revival meeting. Pretty much the same people got saved there every year, but I don't know if they saved any daylight.

God, Save us from Women

Paula absolutely, firmly, undeniably, no appeal allowed, vetoed my request to keep a pet rat. Many years ago I had a pet rat, a very nice young male rat creatively named Butch.

Butch was an intelligent, playful, inquisitive, loyal pet. Sort of like a pocket sized dog, with a pocket sized dog brain; he liked to sniff asses; to do so, he would run up inside your pants; most people found that, initially, disconcerting. I figured he was a babe magnet, one of many that I kept laid out around my lair. A rat can be as exciting as a puppy, if the rat's owner handles the interactions between the rat and other humans in a wise and judicious manner.

When I was young, 'wise and judicious' was not yet a legible entry in my mental dictionary. I exploited that rat as a means to achieving greater sexual success. That such success frequently brought forth difficult situations was not a factor I considered. 'Rats help catch Babes' and are cheaper than convertibles; I equipped myself with a 1959 DeSoto Fireflight Convertible, AND a rat named Butch. I was, I daresay, the center of a minefield of babe magnets. A component stereo with cool jazz records, quotations from Nietzsche on the walls, Southern Comfort setting on the bar with a pair of cordial glasses; twas a mine field of babe magnets. Of course, it got me in trouble.

Absolutely contrary to all reaches of sane reasoning, I don't regret the trouble. Two outstanding biological grandsons resulted from the effects of that mine field, both of whom occasionally read this journal. I wish them well and hope they have as much fun being grandfathers as I do.

Anyway, just because I want another pet rat doesn't mean that I am trying to attract babes, again. Paula should know that, but I suspect she forgets on occasion, and this is one of those occasions. While using Butch as part of an elaborate mating display I learned to value him for his pleasant company, as the mine field sat empty of babes more than filled. Ah! Yes, but it did catch some wonderful specimens.

I'd best quit, before my wife reads this.

The Chief FOOL Speaks

The Friends of the Oskaloosa Library, the FOOLs, elected me as their leader. I am taking this job seriously, and have thus written the following piece for the spring newsletter. I'm including it here because it there isn't anything else to fill out Farm News this week.

Doesn't that headline look important? It could have been, “Notes from the President,” or some similar drivel, but, “The Chief FOOL Speaks,” has real impact. That is one of the many reasons I used my executive authority to change the title of this office from 'President' to 'Chief FOOL.' Last week I volunteered in the library for a few hours, and a beautiful blonde two-year-old cutie, upon learning that I was Chief FOOL, blew me a kiss! She also allowed me to hold her toy dog. There is no doubt, the new title has added to the public recognition of the office.

Are you a FOOL? If not, what are you doing in Oskaloosa? You can become a FOOL for a year for only $5, which is a ridiculously small sum for such a great honor. For $20 you can become a FOOL for life, a status which can save you in many embarrassing situations. When you spill chocolate milk on the white rug at a big party, you can simply look down and say, “Oh, I'm a lifetime FOOL,” and everyone will understand.

For $100 you can become a FOOL for life, and the Chief FOOL will design, create, and sign for you a diploma granting you the degree of Total FOOL! Hang that on the wall and, when you have drunk too much champagne at your own anniversary party, ending it by vomiting on the new white rug, your spouse needs to say nothing, but simply point to your diploma on the wall.

Roger Barker and Paul Gump, two big-time scientists and late residents of Oskaloosa, discovered and showed that in small towns and small schools there are just as many jobs that must be done to keep the community alive as there are in larger towns and schools. Oskaloosa has just as many newspapers as Topeka (although there are fewer editions), Oskaloosa High School has the same number of football and basketball teams as Lawrence High, and the community-keeping tasks that must be done in both Oskaloosa and Lawrence are about the same. In Lawrence there are plenty of skilled people eager to serve on the Annual Downtown Sidewalk Sale steering committee. In Oskaloosa, half the members of the Old Settlers committee will be fools (and we have to beg them to help us), and the leaders will be busy with three other jobs, also.

Want some examples? A Japanese exchange student, who barely spoke English, was once on an Oskaloosa FBLA spelling relay team. A one armed guy, who could sort of speak English, played on the basketball team one year and lettered twice in football. In a small town you take what you can get, even a FOOL.

Barker and Gump, by the way, wrote a book called Big School Small School which I thought was one of the most important books about education I had ever read. I have never met a public education administrator who has read it. If you know a public education administrator, please suggest to that person that a FOOL membership might be a real career builder.

Anyway, the point of all this stuff about Barker and Gump is to show that, in small towns, even FOOLs are needed. There aren't enough normal people to go around. If you understand this, then you will see there is an advantage in having both a life membership and a life-long sequence of $5 annual FOOL certifications: with those $5 annual certifications, you might receive a button, like those stupid smiley-face pins, that may carry such messages as, “I Made of FOOL of Myself in Oskaloosa,” or, “I FOOL around with books.” If it is important to you that people know that you have earned some sort of a reputation as a FOOL in Oskaloosa, then the annual $5 renewal might be your best choice. I have always thought that the $20 life-time membership lacked bling.

The $100 diploma, though, has terrific bling (you have to know a city person to know what bling means; I'm trying to appeal to urban fools, too, because they can help in a small town even though they don't live there). For $100, you will have the opportunity to interact with the Chief FOOL during the design of your diploma! The number of degrees available grows hourly, sometimes, so you will be able to choose the degree that best matches your ambitions.

Two fun books to read this summer: His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik, and Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Both books are somewhat silly in places but fun to read. Both books are the first in a series. I read three of Novik's books and liked them all. Wrede & Stevermer are obviously influenced by Jane Austen.

Ms. Austen, a woman in whom grace and beauty were combined with wit and intellect to create a formidable presence in society, can still, one hundred and ninety years after her birth in Steventon, influence a FOOL to write sentences which, in a weak and unsophisticated manner, attempt, usually hopelessly, to embody, so to speak, the acknowledged mastery of our native language which Ms. Austen, one of the most famous users of that language, displayed in her fictional accounts, etc.

FOOLs understand that words can be fun. Become a FOOL, even if you already are one.

More on Autism

A reader writes:

What is it about autistic people that makes them different? The only thing that I can see different about autistic people is their ability to "see" things in a different light, that somehow their paradigm became shifted through a unique wiring of the brain. Some autistic people can play a piece of music after hearing it played just once. Others are more visually adapted. Some have limited skills, but what they can do is highly developed. In a "go, go, go" society, as children we are expected to have a knowledge of a broad set of subjects, with very little freedom in the academic structure until high school or even college. When a person who can multiply six digit numbers in their head with ease yet cannot seem to write a single page essay comes along, most of society calls them "stupid" in the literal term, meaning they are incapable of learning. How have/will autistic children adapt to this type of society?

A good question. We must be careful, though, to remember that 'incorporating' them into society is a two way trade: we must adapt ourselves to their special needs in order to be able to include them. We should not agree to ignore the differences of special people, but should look to ourselves to see what manner of barricades have we innocently erected that now block their full participation in our society. We have to decide that we might need them more than they need us. We don't know, but the changes might not be expensive compared to what we might, in the end, pay because they were not included.

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