A Little Shameless Self-Promotion

Yeah, I know it's not Tuesday, but this is a special occasion. I've been published.

Well, yeah…I know…I've had articles published in magazines and letters published in newspapers before, but this is different. I've been e-published, with the first of what I'm hoping is a series of short stories, leading up to me finally making my novel available electronically.

What on earth am I talking about?

Well surely you've heard of the Amazon Kindle, the Nook from Barnes and Noble, and Apple's iPad. They're either all ebook readers or have apps that will let you read digital books. And digital publishing is looking like a way for writers to get their material out there without necessarily having to have a deal with a traditional publisher. In fact, a friend of mine sent me an article about a woman who made a couple of hundred thousand dollars just publishing her stories digitally, and then St Martin's Press offered her a million-dollar contract.

Hmm…no overhead, no expenses, this sounded like something I could get into…especially with as many stories as I have floating around in my head.

So please, go check out my new site at keithgatling.blogspot.com. Become a follower, so you know when I've put out a new story.

And, for Pete's sake (or for Keith's sake), buy and download my first short story, The Restraining Order. It's only 99c.

And if enough of you buy it, and recommend that your friends buy, I might be able to buy lunch at Wendy's next week.

Girls Gone Stupid or Jimmy Stewart, Where Are You?

A lot of you might think that I’ve been living under a rock, but I had seriously never heard of Girls Gone Wild until I saw the bus pass us on the New York State Thruway back in April. Well, actually, I might have heard of it, but I really didn’t know what it was all about. My wife knew what it was because she’s up in the middle of the night, when the commercials are on. But I was totally unaware of the entire phenomenon.

So I decided to check out the website.

HOLY CRAP! This was not at all what I was expecting.

I mean, from the brief glimpse I got of the bus as it passed us in the opposite direction, I assumed it had something to do with girls in bathing suits doing crazy things. But like I said, I was not expecting what I saw when I got there.

It was like a train wreck…it was terrible, but I just couldn’t stop watching. I clicked on link after link, fascinated, and horrified, at what these girls were willing to do on camera for a t-shirt.

Yes…for a t-shirt.

And then I thought about Jessie Logan, who I mentioned a few weeks ago. She was the beautiful 18-year-old girl who committed suicide after intimate photographs, meant only for her boyfriend, were spread all over town.

On the one hand we have a girl so mortified over her small town seeing intimate pictures of herself that she killed herself. On the other hand we have girls just a few years older (and sometimes the exact same age) willing to do more than just expose themselves for an estimated 100,000 men -- both on the Internet and on home video.

Just for a t-shirt.

How on earth do some people get there?

I'm thinking that a false sense of sophistication, or a misguided desire to be considered sophisticated is involved. Let me just give you two names here: Lindsay Lohan and Brittney Spears.

But alcohol also has a lot to do with it, since the GGW crews seem to tend to show up at places where a lot of drinking will be going on. I can’t possibly imagine any of the young women in these videos agreeing to be filmed doing these things if they were stone cold sober. And apparently there has been quite a bit of “next day remorse,” resulting in quite a few lawsuits.

And as I think about the role that alcohol plays in getting young women to agree to be filmed by these people, I keep coming back to a line from the classic movie The Philadelphia Story where Jimmy Stewart’s character explains to Katherine Hepburn the reason he didn’t take advantage of her the night before, saying “You were a little the worse…or better for wine…and there are rules about that.”

“There are rules about that.” What a concept. What ever happened to the ideal of not taking advantage of a girl…or anyone…who’s had too much to drink? There may not be rules out there with the force of law about situations like this, but Jimmy Stewart will tell you that a gentleman knows that you don’t do that.

And yet, I have to admit that, unless they’ve been living under the same rock that I was under, people who go to events sponsored by Girls Gone Wild know why the crew is there. So there is some personal responsibility.

But come on…doing all that for…a t-shirt? Honestly, with what GGW will eventually make from those images, they can afford to give those girls a lot more than that.

Or would that somehow cross some sort of psychological line? Is there a difference between taking off your clothes in exchange for a GGW t-shirt…for “fun,” and doing the same thing for $1000? Would the crews attract “the wrong kind of girls” if they were offering money? Would offering money somehow run them afoul of the law?

Who knows.

But still…a t-shirt?

Postscript:
The other day, while we were in the car, I heard Brad Paisley singing his song I’m Still A Guy, and was struck by the following lyrics:

You see a priceless French painting
And I see a drunk naked girl

Hmm…maybe the phenomenon is older than we think. Could it be that Renoir was a painter for Mademoiselles déchaînées?

The Four Stupid Smart Girls and US

Dan told me the story of what he calls “the four stupid smart girls” that he graduated with, and I think it’s one worth repeating.

As I recall, there were four girls at the top of his graduating class in high school. They were all friends until it came time for class rank to be posted and for the valedictorian to be announced. You see, by any normal measure, all four of them would’ve been listed as number one, the person after them would be listed as number five, and that would be about it. After all, that’s what happens when more than one person is tied for number 42.

But number one was different. Whoever was number one got to be the valedictorian of the class, and give the big speech. So now, who was number one was important, and Dan says that the school took their calculations out to three decimal places to try to figure out who was really number one.

Because after all, you couldn’t have more than one valedictorian…at least not in 1974 you couldn’t.

All of a sudden, Dan says that the claws came out on these four girls, as they argued amongst themselves and in front of others about who was the smart one and who were the stupid ones. Each of these girls wanted to be the valedictorian so badly that it destroyed their friendships.

Meanwhile, Dan, who was "only" number 20 in a class of 450 laughed at the spectacle, as did many of their classmates. You see, Dan realized that even at number 20, he was still in the 95th percentile, and these four girls, tied for the number one spot, arguing over who the stupid one was, were up there in the 99th. They were so much smarter than everyone else, and yet it was important to them whether one of them had a 99.999, a 99.998, a 99.997, or a 99.996. Their egos were so bound up in this, that they couldn’t understand that it didn’t really matter, and that no one would care in four years.

And that's what made them stupid.

Why do I repeat Dan’s story here? Because it’s important as we think about where the United States sits in global comparisons about education, technology, and a few other things.

A few years ago, at a faculty meeting, I was shown a YouTube video called Did You Know, that’s scaring the pants off of people. It talks about how India and China are going to catch up with, and surpass us in a few years. About how in a few years China will have more English speakers than the United States. I've also heard from other sources that America sucks in math and science because our students only come in at number 10 on whatever test it is that they're using to figure this out.

My response to that is pretty much the same as Dan’s was to the four stupid smart girls: So what?

Really. Is there any rule that says that we have to be number one in everything? Were we always number one in education or technology? No. And if we’re “only” number 10, doesn’t that still put us in the top 10 of all the countries in the world? And maybe the way other countries do their testing is different. Perhaps those countries that seem to be beating us only let their best of the best take whatever test it is that they’re beating us on, while we believe that everyone should have a chance. Maybe if we cherry-picked our best and had them take the test, we’d beat the pants off of everyone else.

But again, the question remains: Why do we always have to be number one? What’s wrong with hanging out with Dan in the 95th percentile? That’s still pretty darn good.

This fear we have of falling behind, and of being beaten by some other country, has us now trying to shoehorn students who would’ve been better in English, Psychology, Linguistics, or Music into Engineering, Computer Science, or some other technology-related field, so that we can “regain our edge.” I think that’s a very bad idea.

And I’d like to think that 37 years later, even the four stupid smart girls would understand that.

Of Privacy and Perspective: 2

I’ll tell you right now that this starts out with a sad story. Actually, it starts out with two sad stories.

The first is about Jessie Logan, a high school senior who sent naked pictures of herself to her boyfriend, only to find out that he had forwarded them along to his friends, who forwarded them along to their friends, and before you knew it, the entire town knew about her pictures. The harassment and taunting she got from her classmates was so bad that she committed suicide.

The second is about a freshman at Rutgers named Tyler Clementi. You may have heard of him. He’s the one who jumped of the George Washington Bridge after his roommate posted videos of him having sex with another male student to the Internet.

Now I want to tell you a good story. It’s about my friend “Lauren.” When she was in college, she had innocently made a video for her boyfriend, only to have his roommate make a copy of it and post it to the Internet for all the world to see. But she’s still alive.

Why is Lauren still alive while Jessie and Tyler aren’t? Well first of all, she had the support of her family and friends. Now, by saying this, I do not in any way mean to imply that Jessie and Tyler didn’t have the support of their family and friends. I know from watching the heart-wrenching video, just how much support Jessie had from her mother. But for some reason, it wasn’t enough. What went wrong?

I’d like to think that it all boils down to a sense of perspective. Somehow Lauren was able to say “Yeah, this sucks right now, but it’ll blow over in a few years.” Maybe her parents and friends were able to say this to her, and have her believe it. And you know what, almost 10 years later, no one really cares about that video that her boyfriend’s jerk of a roommate posted to the Internet.

Yes…it may suck right now, but it will blow over. You will meet new people who don’t know about the incident, you’ll look different in a few years and no one will recognize the person in that video or those pictures as being you. It will blow over.

And let’s talk about meeting new people. Maybe Lauren wouldn’t have been so lucky had this happened to her in high school. Why? Because the high school community is a very small one, everyone knows you, and within those close quarters a few mean people can seem to be everywhere. But when you get to college, there are so many more people, most of whom don’t know you, and most of whom don’t care what potentially embarrassing pictures of you have been posted online. At the small high school Lauren went to, this might have been a disaster. But at the major university she attended when this happened, it wasn’t even worth a footnote.

The sad thing is that Tyler Clementi didn’t know this. He didn’t realize that in the grand scheme of things, the video of him having sex with another guy wasn’t seen by that many people, but that his death, and why he killed himself, would make him world famous.

And not only will it blow over, but people will grow up. In a few years it would’ve blown over for Jessie and Tyler, but it will never blow over for the people who were responsible for their deaths. Because even if they don’t feel any guilt about it now…

One day they’ll have kids of their own, and then it will hit them like a ton of bricks.

But I don’t really care about them. I’m more concerned with all the potential Jessies and Tylers out there, and I want you to know that it will blow over. It’ll suck for a year or two, but it will blow over.

Trust me on that, and don’t do anything rash before then.

The Help and My Help

I’m vaguely aware of the fact that there’s a book out there called The Help and that there’s also a movie based on it. I’m also vaguely aware of the fact that there seems to be a fair bit of controversy around both. Something having to do with the fact that this book about black women at the height of the Civil Rights Movement was written by a white woman. Controversy over whether or not a white woman has any right to tell this story…especially from the perspective of the black characters.

Sigh.

I hear things like this and I wonder if anyone would dare say that that I have no right to write a book telling the story of people in medieval England. Or that an Asian has no right to tell the story of a French-Canadian family in Quebec. We certainly had no problem with an American writing about the Dutch, as can be seen by Mary Mapes Dodge’s writing of Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. But for some reason these days, we seem to have an issue with people writing “outside of their ethnic group,” as if it’s only appropriate for you to write from the perspective of your own…and that assumes that each ethnic group has one single monolithic perspective.

But enough of that, that whole discussion is a little too serious and depressing for me to want to deal with right now. So instead of talking about The Help, I want to talk about my help.

One of the many advantage of being a teacher was the number of students who practically fought over being able to babysit for my daughter, Devra. Once, when Liz wasn’t available for her regular Sunday afternoon gig (because you know, like teenagers have lives), Sarah, a beautiful blond classmate of hers, jumped at the chance to take her place.

So she arrived at our slightly messy house on Sunday afternoon, all set to play with little Devra for four hours, while my wife slept and I got a few things done outside the house. But when she got there, Devra was asleep.

“What should I do?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. Just hang out. Watch TV, eat. If she stays asleep, it’ll be the easiest babysitting gig you ever had.”

When I returned, four hours later, Devra was still asleep, and I almost didn’t recognize the house. Sarah had done some serious cleaning up, and everything had been straightened up and put away. Even the dishes had been washed.

“Sarah, what happened?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “I felt guilty just sitting around doing nothing while you were paying me, so I decided to clean up a little bit.”

“Oh Sarah,” I said, “I wish my grandmother were alive to see this.”

With a puzzled look on her face, she asked, “Why?”

“So I could tell her that a white girl came over and cleaned my house.

We both got a good laugh out of it, and still laugh about it 16 years later.

I think that the women in The Help would appreciate it.

And that, my friends, is progress.

Before Their Time

Roughly 25 years ago, when I was working at the Syracuse University Library, one of the student assistants, a beautiful girl in her early 20s, was telling me about her wedding plans. When she told me that the big day was going to be on November 22nd, I had a look of shock on my face.

When she asked me what was wrong, I slowly replied, “That’s the day President Kennedy was assassinated.”

And then, after a slight pause, she said to me, “Keith…I wasn’t even born then.”

Wow. I was amazed. Here was a girl for whom it wasn’t even a case of JFK being shot when she was a little kid (and quite frankly, I was only seven at the time, and since it happened in Texas, I imagined it as a western-type shootout). No..she wasn’t even born yet when it happened. It was before her time.

And as that sunk in, I thought about how cool that was. How cool it was that the defining tragedy of a generation happened before she was born, and wasn’t part of her lifetime. It wasn’t her tragedy to remember and be affected by. However, the space shuttle Challenger had exploded just the year before, so she had her own “one horrible day” to remember.

Then I thought about my generation, and how for us December 7th merely meant that there were only 18 days until Christmas. Pearl Harbor meant nothing to us, having happened a good 15 years before we were born. Unless we had relatives who served in World War II, and talked about it, or unless we lived in Hawaii, it wasn’t our national tragedy, and we started off our lives with a “clean slate” so to speak. All of the horrors of World War II happened before our time.

And so it was with my parents’ generation, which was born a good 12 to 16 years after the sinking of the Lusitania, which brought us into “The Great War.”

I thought about all of these things again as I had a Facebook conversation with a former student, who told me that she was in my 6th grade classroom the morning of September 11th. When she told me that she was really too young to understand what was going on at the time, I told her that it was good to be too young to understand a tragedy, because we can’t hold all the hurt of the world in our hearts forever. Then I said that I love the fact that my daughter Sofie was born in 2002 because it meant that 9/11 was before she was born. Like November 22nd for that student assistant, December 7th for me, and May 7th for my parents, it’s not something from within her lifetime, and it means that the world goes on.

I knew people who died that day. I also knew people who were working at the WTC and the Pentagon, and escaped with their lives. I commuted in and out of Manhattan from Jersey City through the World Trade Center on a regular basis, and its destruction was like having a town I visited often wiped off the map. So with no disrespect to any of those people, or the thousands of others who were killed that day, I’m going to say that I love the fact kids like my daughter represent the fact that time goes on.

As I said to my student, we can’t hold the entire hurt of the history of the world in our hearts. It would make us crazy. Of course we can learn about it, understand it, and respect it. But there will always be a new generation born for which a particular tragedy is ancient history, and before their time.

And this is a good thing.

I look at the kids of Sofie’s generation and am thankful that that one horrible day 10 years ago happened before they were even born.

And yet I know, sadly, that at some point they’ll have their own “one horrible day.”

Looking for the Next Great Waste Product

Back in June I went to a conference on Biophysical Economics. Now before you all freak out, let me just tell you that it’s simply a ten-dollar word for sustainability. And as the people at the conference talked about the obvious things like carbon footprints, population growth, and our dependency on a decreasing supply of oil, I started thinking about waste products…and whales.

Yeah, waste products and whales. And I was wondering what the next great waste product will be..

You see, as I sat there listening to all these people, I remembered reading somewhere that gasoline used to be considered an unwanted and useless waste product from the production of kerosene. It was so unwanted that refiners used to dump it into Lake Erie under cover of darkness; and that’s where all those stories about Lake Erie catching on fire came from.

But what does this have to do with whales?

Kerosene basically saved the whales, who were being hunted to near extinction in order to provide oil for lamps.

But wait…there’s more. When I got home, I decided to look up this thing about gasoline being an unwanted waste product. I wanted to be able to back up what I was saying. And then I found something that amazed me. An article at wotwaste.com showed me that not only was I right about gasoline being an unwanted waste product from the refining of kerosene, but that crude oil itself was an nuisance that often came up as people mined for salt.

And then in 1854, Canadian Abraham Gesner discovered Kerosene, which was cleaner and less expensive than whale oil, and suddenly that murky nuisance became liquid gold.

And saved the whales.

But there was still the problem of what to do with all of the byproducts of kerosene refining, one of which was gasoline. Now the tables have turned and everyone wants gasoline, and very few care about kerosene.

The point still remains, though, that gasoline, kerosene, and all the other petrochemicals we depend upon so much were either unwanted waste products themselves, or came from something that was originally thought to be a nuisance in our pursuit of something else.

So I sat there wondering what is the next great waste product? What is the next great thing that we see as a common nuisance right now, but that will free us from our dependence petroleum?

And what new problems will it bring along with it.

Think about it; once kerosene became available at 1/3 the price of whale oil, more people started buying oil lamps, and using them longer, which meant that more kerosene needed to be produced. Similarly, once we found something that gasoline and the other petrochemicals were useful for, we used them more and needed more and more of them. In programming, this is called an infinite loop. In economics, I believe it’s called a Ponzi scheme.

It is indeed possible that we’ll find that next great waste product within the foreseeable future, but we need to realize that there won’t be an infinite amount of whatever it is. At some point we all need to scale back. Scale back our expectations, scale back our usage, and here comes the third-rail of all conversations about biophysical economics…scale back our family sizes.

But that…is a conversation for another time.