...and I probably still am!

I just sent the email below to a guy I graduated with in High School who had emailed a bunch of us about an upcoming reunion. Joe was very active with the Black Student support group at Westtown - I forget the exact name, but it probably fit into some cute acronym like the same group in college - the Black Leadership Action Committee. I forget how it came up, but he once invited me to come over to his room in our senior year to talk about race issues, a topic that has always fascinated me. I don't remember a lot about our discussions, but I remember this: He asked me very matter-of-factly and non-confrontationally, "Are you afraid of black people?" Of course, I answered no, and he didn't challenge me on it, but I suspect the real answer lay somewhere along the lines of Yes! Funny, I also remember my sister, Sherry, asking me the same question some years later, except this time it was about women and of course, I am pretty sure the answer I gave and the one I should more honestly have given were the exact same as to Joe's question.


Hey Joe –

How are you? How’s life? Hey, I saw the thing in The Westtonian about George Bell and googled him to try to say hello and congrats on what was it – getting in to the Hall of Fame? But I couldn’t find an email address for him. Do I remember that you are in touch with him on occasion? If so, please tell him I said Hi and congrats.

I think of you from time to time, Joe, tho I’m embarrassed to admit, I think of you primarily when events like the Imus thing happened. I was a fan of his, to some extent, used to listen to his show on the way to work. It always seemed sad to me that that he felt it necessary to use some of the routines his staff engaged in – sad that he wanted it, sad that people still found it funny. I think after what happened, an opportunity was missed. He pledged to change the format of his show to include, I forget what his exact words were, whether he said more diversity or more minority voices. I wish they’d suspended him, put him on probation and then waited to see what direction he took his show in. He could have used it for good going forward, and taught people a lot.

I get tired of hearing people say that we need a “national dialogue on race”. Seems to me that people love to talk about race issues already. Problem is, it’s too often whites talking to whites and blacks to blacks, and presumably other minorities with each other too. I think I may have told you that I once participated in a “Listening Seminar” hosted by the local YWCA, hosted by the mother of a Westtown Student I coached there in volleyball, named, shoot, her last name was Pettus, for some reason, I’m thinking her name was Candy? She was a very talented actress, I believe. And the father of the family may have been the President of Cheney University? Anyway, there were about 10 of us in the seminar which met 1-2 nights a week for a month or so. I think about ¾ of us were of the Caucasian variety, and the problem was that we were pretty much all of the same mind – open-minded, liberal-types. Well, open-minded to a point. I took many things away from that gathering, but one thing I remember in particular relative to what I started this paragraph with.

One woman was African-American – the head of the local NAACP. She was very angry about a lot of things. And she seemed far more interested in talking than listening, but that was OK, because we had a lot to learn from her. I was upset by some of the things she said, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. One thing she said that most upset me was when someone said they would like to have more opportunity to speak with blacks about race issues and she said that her friends wouldn’t be interested in doing that since they were tired of talking about it with each other! I sure hope that isn’t/wasn’t true, but it kept us from pursuing the idea any further and perhaps an opportunity was missed.

Well, I didn’t expect to go off on that tangent, Joe. I promised you a few years back that I was going to email you with some of my thoughts about race issues, and this is a thimble full of those thoughts. There’s plenty more where they came from, tho none of it necessarily more coherent!

And I also want to make clear that although I admitted above that I think of you primarily in a black/white context, when such issues come up, it has always struck me how comfortable I am around you. You know how you have close friends you can go without seeing or communicating with for years, but when you do see them, you can start talking as though you never stopped hanging with them? You make me feel that way too, not because we have a lot to talk about or a lot in common, but it’s your aura, I think. One that makes you immediately comfortable to be around. I always think of Randy Nadeau that way too, tho since he and I were roomies, we have more to talk about. Anyway, I hope you get my point.

I hope life is great for you, Joe, and if you ever are down here to see the Longs and want to stop in for a home-cooked meal, please let me know. Or I can just meet you somewhere after work if you’d prefer that.

- Jamie

Come again?

My friend Mike, whose blog can be found at http://www.michaelpcolumns.blogspot.com/, recently referred to a store in Exton called Purvis Indian Market, so, wondering where it is, I googled “Purvis” and “Exton” and this was one of the top Google results:

"Social Neuroendocrinology
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobatcontact would be more conclusive. Masturbation-induced orgasm also leads to in-. creased T in heterosexual women (Exton et al. 1999) and men (Purvis et al. ... "

This raises so many questions in my mind (as opposed to my left kneecap) it's going to take everything I have (well, maybe not everything) not to look into it, but it does make me wonder what "T" is and whether it's a good thing, and if so, why only for heterosexers?

I also wonder how they explained to the participants exactly what it was they intended to measure and how they needed to go about compiling the uh, raw data.

Scoring points with people

Last week, someone said in a meeting "Jamie's point is well-taken". Why did he compliment himself for understanding my point instead of saying "Jamie's point is well-made!" How about a little somethin' for the effort!

And have you ever seen anyone's point?

Losing: The New Winning

It seems to me that the wars we've been involved in since say, 1946, and I mean the ones that have lasted longer than a holiday weekend, which rules out Grenada, we've been better off losing than winning or tying:

Korean War - It was a draw and we're still there, many billions of dollars later

Vietnam War - We lost and now their country has never been in better shape. We're one of their major trading partners, and furthermore, if we'd "won" we'd have spent many billions of dollars propping them up with financial aid these past 30 years

Desert Storm - We won this one, and then had to go back in 10 years later to, as we kept hearing the right-wingers say, "finish the job", which nicely leads us to the current

Iraq War - Did we win yet?

Especially all the girls I knew in high school

What ISN'T easier said than done? Even picking a peck of pickled peppers is easier said than done.

Just don't ask what I think of when I see Jerk Chicken on the menu

Whenever someone refers to a door jam, I think about toe jam, which makes me think about strawberry jam, and then jamming a radio frequency, and then I think about learning to play the banjo so I can jam with my friends, which would be fun to do while we eat jambalaya, and we could sing jamboni, jamboni, j-j-j-j-jamboni. And then, of course, it gives me yet another chance to think only of myself.

Except when you're taking care of little kids - that's legit!

Funny how often we say we haven't had time to do something:

"We really want to have you guys over but we've just been so busy."
"I've been trying to get that stuff to you, but I just haven't had time."

But I realized that the same people saying that, myself included, have also had time to watch any number of random TV shows, or cut their grass or go to a ballgame.

So what we/they're really saying is "We really want to have you guys over, but there are just so many other things we'd RATHER do."

Power to the 3-year old people

Our 3-year old daughter, Emma came into our room the other morning while Cheryl and I were still in bed, the TV having just woken us up, after which i reset it to let us sleep a little longer and turned it off, at which point, Emma said "The power must have gone off." Made me realize I know as much about why the power goes on and off as a 3-year old. Not a deep thought, but about right for first thng in the morning.

Stuff I think about sometimes that makes my head hurt if i spent to much time on it, tho not as bad as when i think about what will happen when I die

Is zero a number? Seems like it should be, but if I said that I've been to Namibia a number of times, am I telling the truth?

Is it fair to say we live just minutes away from Keokuk, Iowa? It's many, many minutes, but it's minutes nonetheless. But then noneistheless than many many usually, unless we're talking about many, many negative numbers. Noneisthemore than negative numbers.