How To Write A Resume

I used to help people get jobs for a living.  (Let that sentence sink in for a minute).  I had almost forgotten this part of my life until an opportunity popped up last week with one of my employers.  I sat at a table during Career Day and went over resumes with nervous job seekers.

I slipped into my old routine and offered suggestions and rewrites just like it was 2003 and I was surrounded by thousands of seekers at Heinz Field or PNC Park.  In those days, I also used to offer resume-writing workshops for CareerLink.

Resume writing is like learning to ride a bike.  The process is scary and painful and makes you want to cry in frustration, but once you get it done you’re good to go. 

This economy is obviously bad, and I realized again these past few days that I can help, so here is an article I once had published in Columbus, Ohio and St. Louis.  I’ve tweaked it a bit.  Hopefully some of you will find it useful.  I know the process is scary, but you can do it!

~-~-~-~-~

I Know You’re Cheating On Me!

I see you.  For some reason you don’t think I do, but I do.  And I’m not alone.  There are many of us watching you.  We see what you are about to do as clearly as if we were watching a movie we’ve seen a hundred times before.  You are cheaters, and we are teachers.   

Growing Pains, 1986. Mikey Seaver gave me my first lesson in cheating.

Once you teach long enough, student behavior begins to become predictable.  Each person is unique, but patterns aren’t so surprising after a while.  Some semesters I feel like Neo in The Matrix, seeing through the facade.  You can almost create psychological profiles on people just based on what seat they select when entering a classroom, usually enough to generalize personality anyway.  This science isn’t exact, but it’s amazing what a little psychology will do for an observant teacher.

Then there’s the detective side of the job.  I imagine that police investigators just laugh as they predict the next three moves of some criminals.  That’s kind of how I feel when I watch batch after batch of new students flow through.  Sometimes you know what they’re going to try before they even conceive the plan.

Teachers always share their best stories with each other, and that includes ridiculous cheating tales.  One of my favorites it of a student who acquired a research paper from the internet.  The pitiful plagiarizer didn’t change one word including the name of the person who actually wrote the thing!  Most cheaters aren’t so hopeless, and I might not get you all, but here are some of the stereotypes I’ve identified from a lifetime in the classroom.  Remember, teachers were once students too.

***

The Peeker

Peekers are non-committal cheaters.  They want to just have a look, a quick glance.  I think most peekers are just thinking when their eyes impulsively dart next door.  They’re funny because when they make eye contact with me they do this 360 head roll as if they just needed to knock out some in-test calisthenics.  Peekers can also graduate to become…

The Starer / Leaner (Giraffing)

No, your hair doesn’t hide your eyes. Yes, it is super obvious.  Yes, it makes me crazier than all the others.  Yes, I do grade all of your work with extra scrutiny for the rest of the semester.  I just don’t understand how you folks can sit there reading the next person’s test for long periods of times.  You always freak out when you look up and see me, so why bother? 

 

 

 

Old School Giraffing

The Couple

The old-fashioned term would be confederates, having a partner in crime.  I don’t know how many times I’ve seen boyfriends and girlfriends try to carry out schemes, but any two or more can play.  This must be a fun part of college courtship as those with eyes for each other fall deeper in lust over plans to cheat on upcoming exams.  Some friends on Facebook helped me out this week with tales of hand signals and elaborate note passing schemes.  I love it when friends miss the same 6 questions with the same weird answers.

The Techies

I hear you can have Microsoft Office on an iPhone for $15 making it easier than ever to palm everything you’ll need to know for the exam in one simple spot.  Audio recordings via ear buds are also possible with this crowd.  Facebook friend Shawn went low-tech with an answer sheet inside the plastic wrapping of a water bottle.  How does one get an answer sheet you ask?  

I remember an anthropology professor from my alma mater who never changed his tests.  Students just passed them along from year to year, memorizing the multiple choice answers.  I wouldn’t say I was a part of this legacy, but I would imagine you could write 25 letters in order along the spine of a pencil.

A Night With Female Gymnasts

Like many people, there are many sports in the world that I only watch once every four years. That’s what the Olympics are for. I have no idea where bobsledders and curlers and canoers hang out in between the games. I have a theory that they all live on cyborg island, kind of like misfit island for toys only instead of being things no kids want to play with they are genetically perfect mutants who secrete tanning oil while drinking guava juice. At least that’s what I used to think.

Then I took my niece to gymnastics, or as she calls it, ‘nastics. She’s four. My eyes have been opened to a whole new world. This land is filled with ropes and bars and beams. Best of all, there are kids of all ages flying everywhere like some casting call for the next superhero movie, you know, something like X-Men 9: Children of Wolverine.

The kids are really cute, especially the little ones. I watched one instructor working with a few tiny girls, probably 3-year-olds. This woman had some serious patience as she attempted to teach her group how to hang from still rings. They look just like the ones you see on TV only they hang eight inches off the ground. Just 60 seconds of interaction sounded something like this:

Teacher (we’ll call her Miss Debbie): Okay girls, stand here, grab the rings, hang for ten seconds, put your feet on the ground, and then let go.

The girls blink twice then look somewhere else. One girl considers what’s inside her left nostril.

Miss Debbie: Okay Mary, hold for ten seconds. Susie, what are you doing on that. Missy, don’t pick. Uh-oh Mary, remember you have to put your feet on the ground before you let go. Okay Susie your turn. Missy, where’s your finger? Are we supposed to be on that Mary? WOAH! No, Susie! (calmer now) Let’s all have a seat girls. You can’t run and jump on the rings. They’re called still rings, not running rings. Maybe Miss Debbie told you to run and jump but if she did she was wrong. Missy, don’t wipe that on Susie.

So as you can see from the above interaction, two things become immediately clear.

The Greatest Teacher I Ever Had

I wish you would’ve known him. There really was no one else like Ron Forsythe. Ever. No teacher made a bigger impact on me in the classroom, and I’ve had some great ones.

I can still hear him strutting down the hall, singing the bada-da-da of Miles Davis or some jazz legend, umbrella tapping along the hallway floor. We would smile before he ever made it into the room. And when he arrived in the doorway you never knew what was coming next. Sometimes he would stop, scan the room, and flash that mischievous grin. Something was about to happen. Something was always about to happen with Forsythe. Other days he would stroll right past us, briefcase in hand, calling class into session with his famous anthem of “hubba, hubba, hubba!”

I can’t help but imitate that sometimes to this day. Just saying “hubba, hubba” as I walk in the room some days gets me smiling. My students smile too. They’ve never known (until now) that I was just paying tribute to a man I will never forget. He looms powerfully in my mind even now, four years beyond his death in September 2006.

***

After spending part of the 1950s as a pitcher in the Brooklyn Dodgers system and part of the 60s in Nigeria with the Peace Corps, Ron Forsythe spent the latter part of his life teaching English, literature, writing, and life to students at California University of Pennsylvania.

His voice boomed. He shocked people. He was controversial. He forced us to think. He challenged our assumptions and got our attention in a time when a lot of teachers from the old guard couldn’t figure it out.

In ways I appreciate so much more now as an educator, he absolutely dominated the classroom. He had presence yet was wily. Behind those dark glasses churned the mind of a master conductor. He rarely needed to look at a piece of paper yet every second of his class was packed full of meaning and instruction.

I took him five times, no easy feat since those sections always closed quickly. As a 17-year-old freshman, I was blown away on the first day of his class. I wondered if I had made a big mistake by going to college. I squirmed and feared I would never make it. Forsythe always brought the intensity early on. He wanted to eliminate the weak. It would be his way right away or else, “Get out.” You didn’t sleep in that man’s class.

Then the teaching began. I could never believe the patience he had with students who cared. He worked through the room, his hand resting on a shoulder here and there while the questions flowed. The quality of writing from his students was so far above average that faculty from other departments sought him out just to understand how he did what he did.

When asked, I’m sure he said that unlike most profs in the English department, he didn’t have students sit around holding hands and talking about their feelings. Did I mention his colleagues didn’t always appreciate him? Well, the ones that mattered did, and his students adored him.

Keep Your Pants On

Why are so many people taking their pants off in public?  I’m not talking about first-class creepos but rather normal people who for one reason or another need to lose those lower layers.  I’ve been surprised to learn that this trend impacts many parts of our culture from national security to congressional lawmaking (Insert sleezy politician joke here).  During this highly professional investigative process (read: coffee and Google), I’ve even learned that our generational gap may not be as wide as we suspect.

This idea infested my brain after reading one of the funniest headlines ever from my new favorite blogger Girl On The Contrary.  The piece is called That Time The Guy Sitting Next To Me On A Plane Took His Pants Off.  I dare you not to read after a title like that.  The short version comes down to insulin, but that isn’t nearly as interesting.

The problem started with 3" neckties

In a related story, blogger Greg Lindsay recently wrote about Jim Lynch, the man who is just tired of airport security.  His solution?  Take off his pants instead of emptying pockets and so on.  Said Lynch:

 “I got a good laugh from airport security about it—she said she had never seen that before. But it’s not like she told me I wasn’t allowed to take my pants off.”

More power to ya, but I’m not sure I want to see middle America standing pantsless in airports across the country.  Sure, the x-ray machines will pretty much strip you down anyway, but this trend would alter the trauma of airport security in ways I’m not ready to deal with.

Jim Lynch is not an old man, but traditionally it’s been those seniors who are most likely to drop their drawers out of nowhere.  In my experience, these older men just like to show off their battle scars from one surgery or another.  Oftentimes they don’t care who is around and discretion apparently takes too much effort.  I’ve actually seen an elderly man drop his pants to show off a scar to a woman he just met!  Fun times. 

Times weren’t so fun for one elderly man in Chicago last month when the 93-year-old fired shots at paramedics making a well-being check.  According to the story, the man failed to answer after his medical-alarm bracelet went off.  The medics gained entry by removing the air conditioner.  The resident mistook the responders for burglars and fired shots at them!  Fortunately no one was injured as the bullets hit the wall.  The story doesn’t say if the man was wearing pants or not.

Happy Constitution Day!

Today is Constitution Day when we commemorate the establishment of this great nation by playing founding father bingo on college campuses across America.  George Washington and company signed the Constitution into effect on September 17, 1787.  No one had ever done anything like it.  This country might have more issues than a Mousketeer reunion, but we’ve been held together by the words and ideas on that old parchment.

The signers spent the summer of ’87 drafting the Constitution in sweaty Philadelphia.  At that draft, the Patriots took an unlikely quarterback in the 6th round who would, oh wait, that was Tom Brady.  Wrong drafting.  Anyway, I should probably leave all the facts to someone who actually teaches history, so why don’t you click on over to a wonderful breakdown on what one writer has called The Great American Secret.

Love the land you live in Americans.  And remember how it all got started. 

Too Sexy For Her Job?

Can a woman be too attractive for her job? Bring on the sexist debate baby, er, my lady. Maybe you’ve also noticed the recent rash of females beleaguered by their good looks. The issue is far-reaching these days. From sports to business, America to England, Ines Sainz to a Silence Of The Lambs reference, headlines continue to ask if that girl is just too beautiful for her workplace.

Debrahlee Lorenzana: Fired for being her

The first of the business bombshells burst onto the scene this June when Debrahlee Lorenzana lost her job at Citibank for being too hot to handle. Apparently none of her coworkers or supervisors could focus on their work because her appearance was too distracting. I’m assuming these are male co-workers. I can’t speak for the lesbian community because, for those of you who can’t see me, I’m not a lesbian. Or a woman.

I can, however, speak for the male community, and boys you have no leg to stand on. It’s like the time I sat next to the homecoming queen all semester in college algebra. I can tell you a whole lot more about the red tint of her hair than quadratic equations or whatever else those math weirdos do. Anyway, no one listened to me when I explained that I couldn’t focus on polynomials while sitting next to a less than standard form.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the part where you can’t shun someone because they are too pretty. So if Ms. Lorenzana was doing anything wrong then by all means fire her up, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. According to the Village Voice, the fired femme fatale said her bosses “…ordered her to stop wearing turtlenecks. She was also forbidden to wear pencil skirts, three-inch heels, or fitted business suits.”

If you make turtlenecks and fitted business suits too seductive then more power to ya. I mean, when I started college I had to wear a sweater under my turtlenecks just to fill them out.

Donald: Probably not behind this firing

So as a result of all this hotness hoopla, Ms. Lorenzana was stripped of her, wait, what? Oh, stripped of her duties and then fired. If I understand the basic legal argument here it’s that men in her workplace can’t focus on their job without wanting to have intercourse (the sexual kind) with her. According to her friend Tanisha Ritter:

“Men are kind of drawn to her. I’ve seen men turn into complete idiots around her. But it’s not her fault that they act this way, and it shouldn’t be her problem.”

No word on whether or not men also turn into idiots around Ms. Ritter, but I’ve seen plenty of men turn into complete idiots with no women around. Anyway, back to the issue because if I don’t stop thinking about this banker I’ll never get any work done.

Should 9/11 Be A National Holiday?

Image by Presidio of Monterey: DLIFLC & USAG via Flickr

Can you believe nine Septembers have now come and gone since the towers fell that fall? I’m not going to wax nostalgic this time around. I did that on last year’s anniversary and the 10th anniversary next year is sure to stir up more powerful emotions. This year, I just want to consider a simple question that has been thrown around in recent years.

Each year, more and more young adults with no hard memories of that day observe the commemorations with second-hand emotions. We recall the tragedy of the attacks with heavy speeches and somber silence. The day feels different, weightier. Most of us go on with our day with that knowledge in the backs of our minds that something terrible happened on this date.

The question I am considering now is the idea of making September 11th a national holiday. The date is already called Patriot Day, a discretionary day of remembrance. A joint resolution by the House of Representatives in October 2001 called for the special recognition. President Bush signed the resolution into law later that year. Flags are flown at half-staff. A moment of silence is observed. President Obama continued the tradition of symbolically-timed silence last year before giving a speech at the Pentagon.

Still, there are some would like to see 9/11 declared a full federal holiday in which everything is shut down by the government. States and local areas would follow suit and nobody would end up working as our nation would hit the pause button for the entire calendar square. Does that sound like something you would want? I’m not so sure.

From a practical standpoint, we already have Labor Day right around this time of year. From a historical standpoint, we don’t usually go out of our way to make full federal holidays out of national disasters. For a long time, December 7th meant one thing to all Americans: The attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan in 1941. Many people don’t even recognize that anniversary anymore, but this nation never mandated a day of official recognition, and that terrible event is as close as the U.S. has ever come to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

So what do you think? Should 9/11 be a federally recognized national holiday? Do we want to remember in that way?

Related Articles

• What is Patriot Day? (socyberty.com)

TP, Or Not TP: Can You Spare A Square?

Like Elaine Benes on Seinfeld once upon a time, everyone knows what it’s like to be faced with an empty toilet paper roll. Thanks to a burdened school budget, students at Texas A&M may soon face that dilemma by the thousands. I had already planned on telling this tale before my toilet paper memoir was Freshly Pressed this past week. Now a whole new generation of Aggies will be able to relate.

Texas A&M needs to save millions of dollars this year. One of the proposed solutions has been to stop stocking toilet paper in the dormitory bathrooms. This measure is expected to wipe out over $80,000 of the deficit.

In my decade and a half in higher education as a student and teacher, I’ve seen college kids do some pretty wild things for some of the simple pleasures in life such as fast food, frozen dinners, and alcohol. But they will take downright drastic steps to secure life’s necessities which to them includes toilet paper and alcohol.

Just think of how this shortage might shake up College Station, Texas. Wendy’s won’t be able to hold onto their yellow napkins. Papa John’s and Jack In The Box will have to bolt their bathrooms shut. A toilet paper black market will thrive in the heart of the Brazos Valley! Messing with Texas is bad enough. You really don’t want to mess with a Texan’s bathroom. I don’t even want to think of what might happen to textbooks filled with boring pages of useless information.

Student A: (to his roommate) Hey man, have you seen my chemistry book?

Roommate: (sliding shredded textbook behind his back) Ummm…no?

Conversations will break out across dorms just like the one Elaine had in that Seinfeld episode The Stall.

ELAINE – …umm.. I’m sorry. This is.. this is kind of embarrassing but.. there’s no toilet paper over here.

JANE – (from the stall on Elaine’s right) Are you talking to me?

ELAINE – Yeah, I just forgot to check so if you could just spare me some…

JANE – No I’m sorry.

ELAINE – What?

JANE – No I’m sorry, I can’t spare it.

ELAINE – You can’t spare it??

JANE – No there’s not enough to spare.

ELAINE – Well I don’t need much, just 3 squares will do it.

JANE – I’m sorry I don’t have a square to spare, now if you don’t mind.

ELAINE – 3 squares? you can’t spare 3 squares??

JANE – No I don’t have a square to spare, I can’t spare a square.

ELAINE – Oh is it two-ply? cause it it’s two-ply I’ll take one ply, one puny little ply, I’ll take one measly ply…

JANE – Look, I don’t have a square and I don’t have a ply (flushing and leaving).

Elaine – No no don’t, I beg you…

I’m glad she brought up two-ply because that is the topic in a great potty debate at Princeton University (Motto: “David Duchovney and Elena Kagan got crazy here in ’79”). Student government candidates recently faced off over the issue of whether or not to switch campus bathrooms from one-ply to the more plush version. If you don’t believe me check out the esteemed Daily Princetonian. For the love of F. Scott Fitzgerald (class of 1917). All the money and prestige flowing through Princeton and they’re preoccupied with bath tissue thickness. That’s what I call a sensitive issue ;-).

I Done Been Freshly Pressed!

Toilet paper and the meaning of life, eh?  That’s the crazy combo that got me Freshly Pressed by WordPress this week.  The response has been amazing!  I’m really thankful for the publicity, even more so for all those people who read my article.  I just can’t believe the kind comments.

What’s that?  You haven’t read my toilet paper memoir yet?  Go for it.  What’s that?  You already read it?  Well, I hear it’s even better the second time around, especially if you tell everyone you know 😉

I couldn’t believe it when my page views began leaping by the hundreds before lunch the other day.  I quickly learned that my piece was on the home page, front and center.

Content to ride out  the wonderful wave of visitors, I was thrilled to learn the next day that my post was once again being spotlighted, this time as a featured post on the Education tab front page.

And as if all that weren’t enough, I just discovered last evening that my strange ode to autumn has cracked today’s Blog Of The Day (BOTD) list for the top posts over all of WordPress!  I came in at 100 out of 100 but who’s complaining?

Excited as I am, this truly has been a humbling experience.  Being read by thousands is tremendous, but there’s no greater compliment than to be approved by those who take the time to check out your work.  DFTTP is already well over 50 comments jam packed with encouragement and kindness.  I appreciate everyone more than you know.

I can now float back to reality amidst the masses of fellow thinkers and writers expressing ourselves with loads of creativity and passion.  It’s good to be a part of the WordPress community.  Keep living, writing, and reading.

__________________________________________________________________________
I would love to connect with you on Twitter.  You’ll find me @eduClaytion.

Don’t Forget The Toilet Paper: A Memoir

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” ~ George Eliot

Autumn is all about change. Nature dies as we live. In the northeast, the heat of summer is subdued before the onslaught of winter. Football and hockey revisit us like old friends with the promise of good times over the coming months. Schools are back in session, new faces in new places. Houses empty. Dorms fill. Youth is put to the test.

We never really know what twists and turns are going to manipulate us as we enter new phases in our lives. Some people think they’ve got a tight grip on their lives, but the tragedy of well-laid plans is well chronicled. Someone said the future ain’t what it used to be. For students, it’s a vast wilderness of the unknown.

Few things on this planet give me more fulfillment than spending time with students of all ages. They hold the formula for optimism and idealism, passion and vitality. You gotta love them all, from the wide-eyed, deer in the headlights freshman to the cynical, perpetually unamused veteran of 14 different majors, and all the identity crises surviving coeds in between.

I love watching them as they join the human race in trying to figure it all out. Seeing new things occur to them is as exciting as a breakthrough in my own mind. As I chatted with some sharp seniors in the chemistry program at Pitt the other night I marveled at how near we often are to the beginning even when we feel so close to the end.

***

About 15 years ago to the moment I write this, I moved into college for the first time. I remember that first day well, a new beginning. It was a Sunday in the fall, late August just like now, when my family made the journey to a little town in Southwestern Pennsylvania and deposited me for the forseeable future.

The first person I met was my roommate. He was friends with the coolest guys in town, athletic, going on 21, and adored by women. Everyone called him Rico. I, on the other hand, was bean pole skinny, four months shy of my 18th birthday, and ignored by girls. I had no nicknames other than dork (my sisters) and sunshine (my mom), neither of which offered any help in putting me on the social map.

I wanted to check out the campus, my new home, but was overwhelmed. The only person I knew was an ex-girlfriend. We had broken up a few months earlier but reconnected as friends the day before to at least guarantee ourselves one ally in that foreign country. I wondered what would happen when she met Rico.

Hollywood Ends It All

Dear Hollywood, please don’t butcher my childhood. Is Tinseltown running out of ideas? One movie after the next is a remake these days. Either originality is dead or old ideas just sell too well. I’m not gonna go trendy by condemning every remake ever made. Some of them are great, some even excite me, and some are complete letdowns.

Remakes don’t always fail. I was downright giddy over Superman Returns a while back, and they did a great job. Don’t ask me why the Man of Steel can’t get a sequel while the four most useless women in Manhattan can. Some franchises should go on for new generations, but when I told people I thought A-Team was so good I’d see it again some of them called me names. Some franchises should never be touched (Planet of the Apes or any Mel Brooks films). Some should just die (Charlie’s Angels).

Ain't no stopping the crane technique

The remakes just keep coming, too many to recap. The Green Hornet is here. We’ve already seen Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, and Alvin & The Chipmunks (twice unfortunately). We’ve had to suffer through rehashes of The Pink Panther, Dukes of Hazzard, Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, and others I’ve managed to block out.

What’s especially noticeable now are all the 80s remakes. The current barrage includes a hefty list of gnarly classics so far. The Karate Kid, A-Team, Tron, Wall Street, Nightmare On Elm Street, Footloose, Clash Of The Titans, Pirhana, Miami Vice, and more are upon us.

If you think that’s something consider these movies in the works like Ghostbusters, Total Recall, 21 Jump Street, Knight Rider, Red Dawn, Romancing The Stone, Highlander, and Police Academy. Some of them might get stuck in development purgatory, but the trend is clear. What’s next? Would anyone dare try The Princess Bride? Where’s Clue? How about Dirty Dancing? Oh yeah, it’s called Step Up. Can somebody put a stop to this before we end up with a lame redo of Weekend At Bernie’s?

Complaining does no good, so why not be proactive and help the movie moguls target franchises wholly fit for resuscitation. Seems the execs are all over movies but what other TV shows are next now that The A-Team banked millions? Here’s a short list of 80s awesomeness we might as well see redone as long as it’s totally radical.

Please Don’t Eat Yourself

A lot of what you read around here addresses tough questions. Hopefully that gets done in a unique and useful way. But sometimes it’s just more fun to address interesting questions, those mind-benders that only come from Google’s marvelous library of desperate searches such as the seeker who once asked the search engine:  “What if I ate myself?” A question like that just makes me love people even more.

Worried about eating yourself? We can help.

If you’re tuning into these parts late, I wrote an article a while back (Open Ended Questions & Pregnant Bowlers) about the fascinating ways Google attempts to complete your phrases as you type in the search bar. You’ve probably seen these phrases pop up as you start to type something. That article got a great response, so I started wondering what other gems might be out there.

I was not disappointed.

Still wondering how this works? All you do is start typing an innocent seeming phrase into Google such as…

Is it safe to…

Give yourself a point if you’ve ever wondered is it safe to A) swim in Lake Erie, B) leave butter out, or C) shower during a thunderstorm. Give yourself a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder if you’ve wondered all three. I’ve personally survived this trifecta of terror, although you should be careful the closer you get to Cleveland. Sometimes the real fun begins when you click on these questions to find answers. From what I gather, showering in a thunderstorm is safe as long as you’re not in the Bates Motel.

Is it always…

Some disturbing questions start with these three little words. Apparently some Commandment breakers have asked the Great Google if it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere, wrong to lie, or illegal to kill a woman. I’m gonna end up on a watch list just reading this stuff! And in case you’ve come here for answers then yes, no, and just sometimes. And I won’t even begin to try to understand who asked “is it always wrong to perform futile cpr.”

Should I try…

This is a good question if you want to know every possible outcome from taking every possible illegal substance on the planet. Also can be used if you’re considering online dating or going out for the cheerleading squad. My guess is that you won’t be cheering atop human pyramids if you decide to try acid or shrooms. Although you might think you are.

Is it ok…

If you read my previous piece on these questions, you’ll recall how many of them had to do with pregnancies. Apparently pregnant women can add Googling to their list of strange cravings because they’re still at it. “Is it ok to dye your hair while you’re pregnant?” Yes. “Can you rock climb while pregnant?” Sure, unless you fall. “Is it ok to eat hot dogs while pregnant?” Is it ever ok to eat hot dogs? Tuna and shrimp are also fine.

Are expecting mothers really this neurotic? No wonder our kids are afraid of everything. I say we need more rock-climbing mamas. More of you should be jumping out of planes too. What should you expect when you’re expecting? How about extreme sports. We could be like Spartans without all the bloodlust.

The Golden Rule’s Gettin’ Freaky

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

(Final) Part 7: Make Justice Personal

One of my crunchy friends recently told me about Freegans.  I am officially fascinated.  As I began to learn about these folks, my mind felt like someone had sawed open my head and sprinkled pop rocks amidst the brain tissue up there.  I believe there is hope for the future while simultaneously wondering how long our civilization could possibly go on.  We humans are capable of making absolutely anything unhealthy, including virtue.

This week’s finale to our summer justice series is all about making justice personal by creating rhythyms of social awareness and focusing on caring for those we are most compelled to help.  I suppose there’s all sorts of levels to this type of living.  And then there are Freegans. 

When I read about Freegans, I see a group of people that has decided to fight social injustices like poverty and societal decay by creating a system of poverty and societal decay.  Lewis Black once said he saw the end of the universe, and it was a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.  Well, there are people rooting through the dumpsters behind those Starbucks, and those people are Freegans.

*** 

Remarkably, I don’t even need Wikipedia here because Freegan.Info says it all.  Take a look and you’ll see this stuff writes itself.  According to this mother ship page, “Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.”  I’m almost with them so far except for the part where they pretend human nature doesn’t exist.

Let me see if I can sum up the basic philosophy here.  Freeganism combines freedom and veganism.  These folks once believed in all the possibilities of being conscientious in a society run by businesses that consistently hurt people.  They tried all the things we’ve discussed here over the past few weeks only to find that no matter what they did they just ended up supporting some other evil company.  So basically they’re socialists; no surprises there.

Now let’s look at their principle based “strategies for practical living,” or as I like to call it, acid candy in my brain matter.

1) “Urban Foraging”

Let’s get right to it: what we’re talking about here is dumpster diving for whatever you need including food.  I’m not making this up.  Take it from their own site.  “Despite our society’s sterotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition…”  Am I the only one who didn’t realize we had societal stereotypes about garbage?  I mean, garbage earned its reputation without being attacked by organized groups.

"Can you believe someone would throw this away?"

So you shouldn’t eat food unless it comes from a dumpster or has been discarded.  Oh yeah, anything else you want must never be purchased at a store, but if you find those products in the trash then have at them.  So shopping at Ikea is evil, but owning Ikea furniture is fine.  Sound principles there.  I could say so much here but my brain is really starting to sizzle.

2) “Rent-Free Housing”

The real word here is squatting, to live in a building where you have no legal claim.  It’s not just about residences either.  (Remember this actually comes from their site.)  “…squatters often convert abandoned buildings into community centers with programs including art activities for children…”  I know you were probably thinking children weren’t involved, but who else is gonna squeeze into all those tight corners where the good potato chunks fall?

Reception and Rape

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

Part 6: Conflict-Free Cell Phones

So I saw my first iPad the other day.  Pretty neat.  I’ve never been a gadget guy.  Most of the time I pick up cool new technology after it’s been out a while.  Granted that makes it less cool but way more affordable.  I have yet to hold an iPhone or even see a Droid.  My last two cell phones have been love-worn hand-me-downs that I’ve switched over to my number.  Maybe that’s why I missed so many documented accounts of violence connected to mining minerals necessary for making those little talking rectangles that we just can’t live without.

We’ve arrived at the last major issue of social justice in a series to figure out if and how we can make the world a better place by changing our daily habits.  Now to our list of Fair Trade coffee, slave-free chocolate, sweatshop-free clothing and more we add conflict-free cell phones.

***

Guerilla warfare, murder, and gang rape are terrifying realities in Congo.  The center of Africa is no stranger to civil strife.  Nearby Rwanda is still feeling the effects of the 1994 genocide as refugees from that brutal conflict struggle to find peace in a war-torn land.

Squads of fighters battle for control of lucrative mines that produce raw materials found in electronics like cell phones, cameras, video games, and more.  These profits fund ongoing acts of violence including mass rape which is used to terrorize anyone who would oppose this brutal system.  As we constantly see in Africa, the local people gain no benefit from the lucrative resources beneath their feet. 

The most valuable minerals are called the big four: gold, tungsten, tin, and tantalum.  Our electronics are filled with these valuable commodities which are sent to nearby African nations and smuggled off to Asia for convoluted processing.  According to the organization Enough over 5 million have already died as a result of bloody competition for control of these earthy treasures. 

This topic is especially timely right now since the banking reform bill was just signed into law by President Obama last week.   Apparently, somewhere in the 2,300+ behemoth of legislation (don’t get me started) there’s a new requirement for companies to prove their materials don’t come from conflicted areas like Congo.*  Some folks are jubilant, yet other pundits are quick to point out that:

1. 1. Proving where minerals came from is very difficult (see video below).
2. 2. Regulation of this type will turn companies away from Congo altogether thereby destroying the lives of a million plus people reliant on the work from mines.

We’ve seen these types of statements on almost every other similar issue.  Evil practices must be stopped whatever it takes.