Picking the best of 2021

It’s almost a New Year.

Cue the ball drop in Times Square and Groundhog Day jokes about 2021 being a repeat of 2020, albeit with diminishing returns.

In keeping with the season, the elves at Casa Schillig have taken a trip in the Wayback Machine and bestowed the following awards for the last 12 months, with the hope of better days in 2022:

Get Off My Grid, You Darn Feds Award to Texas officials, who ignored federal recommendations to shore up their power grid, the failure of which contributed to more than 100 deaths after a winter storm bulldozed the state in February. Being independent is great. Being independent at the cost of human lives is pigheaded and foolish.

The Red Planet, Calm Demeanor Award to a helicopter from the U.S. Perseverance, which flew on Mars in April, a first for robotic flight on another planet. Best of all, since no humans were aboard, nobody was arrested for bad behavior.

E.T. Phone Home Award: While we’re on the topic of outer space, how about that long-awaited UFO report by the Pentagon? In an examination of 144 cases, the report basically said that more study is needed. It was like watching “Close Encounters” but stopping after Richard Dreyfuss makes his mashed potato sculpture.

Are You Sick of Knowing What Your Neighbors Think Yet Award to social media. Facebook was a focus of concern for algorithms that push engagement over accuracy, but all social media platforms need to be more transparent about how they prioritize posts and comments. If a wizard waved a wand and made all social media disappear for 2022, many Americans would see decided improvements to their mental health.

Clock-Is-Ticking Award to all of us, citizens of the world. We must put climate concerns ahead of our own self-interests. The United Nations issued a report last summer that was anything but a lighthearted beach read, punctuated as it was by extreme weather events around the world, widely believed to be exacerbated by human-influenced climate change.

Sequel Nobody Wanted Award to “COVID-19: The Holidays Special.” Increasing infections, overrun hospitals, out-of-stock tests and a not-insignificant number of holdouts who refuse to be vaccinated, wear masks or maintain social distance. Can you cough to the tune of “Jingle Bells” or “Auld Lang Syne”? How about “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”? Because it looks like this turkey will be held over through spring.

Best-Dressed Seditionist Award was a tough one, what with all the whining little man-babies hoping for a 1776 moment when they showed up in Trump-inspired finery at the Capitol on Jan. 6, following the directive of their Orange Messiah to “fight like hell.” But I’ll go with the QAnon Shaman, with that horned helmet and fur hat look that inspired countless redneck Halloween costumes.

Biggest Schmeck/Schmuck Award goes to Jared Schmeck, who called the NORAD Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve, engaged in light conversation with President Biden and first lady Jill Biden, and saw fit to end the conversation by saying “Let’s Go Brandon!” The expression has a decidedly non-Yuletide meaning. Schmeck is now, predictably, playing the victim card over pushback from the exchange, saying that it was “just an innocent jest.”

Fight the Man Award goes to U.S. workers, who discovered economic leverage and used it to help drive up wages in traditionally low-paying positions, forcing employers to loosen the purse strings a little. If frontline workers in grocery stores and restaurants really are essential workers — and they are — then they should be paid accordingly.

Most Out-of-Touch Purveyor of Pop-Culture Award goes to me. I leafed through Time magazine’s Best of Culture section recently and realized I haven’t read, listened to or watched any of the publication’s choices for best nonfiction or fiction books, albums, movies, TV shows or podcasts. None of it. I guess I really do wrap myself in cotton at the end of the day and hole up in a closet until the next morning.

On second thought, maybe that’s not a bad way to face this New Year.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Are you a breaker, a fixer, or a brixer?

There are two kinds of people in the world: breakers and fixers.

Breakers cause things to fail. Fixers make things work again or clean up after breakers. It’s as simple as that.

I started using the terms when my daughter went through a particularly rough patch of breaking things. She broke a window to get back into her house after she had locked herself in the garage. In her underwear.

A few months later, she went for a jog and ran through wet cement, much to the chagrin of the workers who had just poured it.

These are classic breaker behaviors.

For a long time, I’ve considered myself a fixer. Admittedly, my fixing is of the jury-rigged variety — supergluing broken ceramics, using a pair of pliers to turn a shattered knob on the clothes drier, or reattaching wheels to a lawnmower with twine.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

But cleaning up breakers’ messes is where I excel. When the cat hacks up a hairball on the loveseat, I’m the person who removes it. (Yes, animals can be breakers, too.) If my wife leaves a half-finished can of Diet Orange Crush on the counter overnight, I drink it the next morning, even though it’s flat and even though I’ve just brushed my teeth.

These are classic fixer behaviors.

Recently, however, I’ve been involved in a few situations that make me think my daughter came by her breaker gene naturally, and not by way of the mailman.

The first instance was last fall, when I tried to move a mattress and box springs from the garage into the basement. The mattress slid right down the steps. The box springs, not so much.

Instead, they got stuck on the handrail. And by stuck, I mean impaled. Granted, this is because I was behind them, pushing and pushing, trying to stuff the bedding equivalent of ten pounds of excrement into a five-pound bag.

By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. The box springs wouldn’t go down, and the box springs wouldn’t go up. They were pinned, like a butterfly on a slide. Worse yet, they were pinned in such a way that I could no longer close the door at the top of the stairs.

I really needed a hacksaw to liberate them. Since I didn’t have a hacksaw, I used a rubber mallet. This caused the handrail to part ways with the wall, but it did allow the box springs, now completely ruined, to come back up the stairs.

Then last week, while attempting to clean a hanging light fixture in the kitchen, I snapped off the light while trying to screw in a lightbulb. (Don’t ask.) Definitely breaker behavior, and not just because I tripped the breaker in the circuit box as a result.

Let the record show I fixed the handrail on the basement steps myself. The light, however, required a patient brother-in-law who never once laughed at my ineptitude. At least to my face. He is not only a consummate fixer, but also a grade-A mensch.

Because of these mishaps, I’ve come to the conclusion that some people — maybe most or even all people — are both breakers and fixers. I call them “brixers.”

Because some days you’re the hairball, and some days you’re the guy who cleans up the hairball. And on really bad days, you’re both.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

cschillig on Twitter

Originally published April 21, 2016. 

Robert Burns and 'Auld Lang Syne'

From December 2019:

Revelers around the world will soon bid farewell to 2019 and welcome to 2020 with raised glasses and “Auld Lang Syne.”

The words to the song are attributed to Scottish poet Robert Burns, but he claimed to have transcribed them from an elderly man in 1788. Some scholars believe the song’s title, at least, dates to the 16th century.

“Auld Lang Syne” means “old long since.” In modern English, “days gone by.” In uber-modern parlance, “back in the day.”

However it’s translated, the sentiment is appropriate for New Year’s celebrations, as society takes a cue from the Roman god Janus, he of the two heads, one looking to the past and one to the future.

The older people are, the more rose-colored their glasses for “auld acquaintance” and a mythical past when things were allegedly simpler. This pining can be sweet and benign, yet it is also the belief that lies at the rotting heart of the modern white nationalism movement, or whatever vile euphemism it lurks under these days.

Similarly, older people are less optimistic for tomorrow because rapid change threatens to erase outmoded ways of thinking and living, no matter how ingrained into tradition they may be.

But pessimism infects our youth, too, and often for the same reasons. Some wonder — at New Year’s and other times — what kind of world they will inherit and how they will make ends meet as technology obliterates entire careers, sometimes through nothing more than a few lines of code and the push of a button.

Such fears and anxieties are natural byproducts of the age we live in, when the “cup of kindness” from “Auld Lang Syne” may be in short supply.

The speculation over past and future appears more forcefully elsewhere in Robert Burns’ verse, in “To a Mouse,” subtitled “On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.”

The poem’s speaker addresses the rodent of the title, apologizing for the accidental destruction of its home. The mouse had hoped to ride out winter, “cozie here, beneath the blast,” until fate — and the farmer — intervened. The accident prompts a sincere apology from the speaker:

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union,

An’ justifies that ill opinion,

Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An’ fellow-mortal.

Later in the poem, the speaker laments that “the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” often go astray, thus inspiring the title of John Steinbeck’s classic novel a few centuries later and reminding those of us thinking New Year’s thoughts how fragile the future can be.

Burns’ speaker actually envies the mouse, despite the loss of shelter, because “the present only” affects her, while he is cursed to “backward cast” his eye “On prospects drear” and look ahead to a future about which he can only “guess an’ fear.”

Despite this comforting absence of introspection and worry on the mouse’s part, I doubt many readers would want to trade places, to live only in the here and now with no recollection of the past, good and bad, and no thought toward the future. I’m reminded too of Dickens’ Scrooge, also timely at this time of year, who learns through an encounter with a plow of his own — in his case, the spirits of Christmas — to “live in the past, the present, and the future” (and to celebrate the holiday in a way that capitalists the world over would approve).

The truth is that in life, sometimes we are the mouse, out of doors, scrambling, lost, and sometimes we are the farmer, pushing the plow and inadvertently hurting others with our deeds and words.

When we are the former, let us hope that our trials and tribulations are brief. When we are the latter, let us strive to be kind-hearted and understanding, willing to fix what we have done wrong and recognizing our shared bond with those who struggle while we have so much. And let’s keep the memory of both states of being.

It’s a sentiment worth toasting in the New Year, with or without the maudlin refrain of “Auld Lang Syne.”

chris.schillig@yahoo.com



@cshillig on Twitter

Cell regeneration in the New Year

This column is from December 2011. It's fairly hopeful for a holiday I dislike. — CS

As one year closes and the next begins, conversation turns to resolutions and the changes necessary to make us feel shiny and new in 2012.

Some people say nature does this for us already. A widely held belief is that our cells replace themselves every seven years, meaning that regardless of our chronological age, at any given time our bodies are about as old as we were when we first learned how to ride a bike and that fart jokes were the apex of humor.

The truth is more complex — about cell rebirth, that is, not flatulence, which really is the wise old man at the summit of the comedy mountain. It turns out that many of our cells do slough off and regenerate, but some — heart and bone and brain — have only a limited capability in this regard, if at all.

Of the three, the brain is the most important when it comes to feeling new. I know plenty of people housed in vital, healthy bodies who are nevertheless imprisoned inside inflexible brains. It’s like having a brand new sports car but driving it from the trunk.

The secret to staying young is far less about keeping a fit body (but that’s important, too) than maintaining a youthful brain. I don’t mean that you must cram your head full of puzzles and trivia to stave off dementia, although those aren’t necessarily bad pursuits. Instead, you should focus on staying flexible in temperament and entertaining ambiguity.

Stop being so certain all the time. Consider the other side. If you’re a Tea Partier, seek to understand the Occupy movement, or vice versa. If you hate sappy, sentimental movies, grab yourself a box of tissues and pop in “The Notebook.” If you’re a longhair fan of Beethoven, give punk rock or screamo a go. If the worker at the cubicle down the way puzzles or annoys you, invite him to lunch.

Don’t enter into these pursuits with nose in the air and teeth gritted, as if bathing in polluted waters. Go with a willing heart — and brain.

Playwright John Patrick Shanley says doubt is essential to advancement. “When a man feels unsteady,” he writes, “when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth.”

Sometimes, our metaphors get us all loused up. We visualize the year that is passing as an old man, and the new one as an innocent babe. This is all wrong. In reality, the New Year is the rickety ancient, his mind already packed with preconceived notions and grudges that carry over from the year before.

Our goal should be to grow progressively younger in spirit as the year goes on — to be more childlike (in the best meaning of the word) in December than we were in January. At what point in life are we happier than when we are babies — laughing with abandon when something is funny, crying just as vociferously when something is not, forgetting one day’s troubles by the time the next day begins? It’s only with age that we learn to repress, hold grudges and set ourselves on destructive paths.

Maybe the most depressing part of New Year’s — even worse than that old Scottish drinking song and the spectacle of so many people staying up too late and imbibing prodigious amounts of alcohol — is the realization that many people see change as something tied to the calendar.

Next year I’ll lose weight, go back to school, find a way out of debt, clean out the trunk of my car. Next semester I’ll stop smoking and start studying. Come summer, I’ll finally read “War and Peace.” But these promises are self-deluding at best, destructive at worst.

I don’t know the percentage of people who keep New Year’s resolutions, but I know it’s pretty dismal. While New Year’s can be a fresh start, so can April 10 or Dec. 29. So can right now.

When anybody asks me my New Year’s resolution, my reply is always the same: to be less judgemental and more tolerant. Truthfully, however, that’s my resolution every day. People who know me well may notice I’ve made progress in this regard. I’m less cynical in my 40s than I was in my 20s, which has nothing to do with age and everything to do with effort. The fact that I’m still three times as cynical as most other people tells me I have a long way to go.

My mission — should I choose to accept it — is to stay mentally young, to entertain all sides of an issue and accept a multiplicity of opinions.
It’s my own version of cell regeneration, and I’ll be practicing it again this year. Join me, won’t you?


chris.schillig@yahoo.com @cschillig on Twitter

My least favorite holiday

My notes in Google Drive say this is from 2010, but the 2012 Aztec reference sounds like it's in the past, so who knows? I'm too lazy to look it up, but New Year's Eve/Day is still my least favorite holiday. Ugh. — CS 

If somebody set out to design the most depressing holiday imaginable, he could do no better – or worse – than New Year’s.

Every part of this so-called celebration might cause lunatics to chew off their restraints or dogs to howl like they’ve heard those whistles that blow at canine-only frequencies. This year is even worse, because we’re ushering out a decade that nobody has successfully named (the Aughts? the Zeros? the Ohs?) and preparing to ring in a decade that also lacks a good name – the Teens won’t fit for a few more years, and the Tens sounds like a brand of adult diapers. How can you wave it goodbye or invite it in when you don’t know what to call it? Maybe that’s why the Aztecs predicted the world would end in 2012 – to spare us the inconvenience of deciding what to label another decade.

Anyway, here are just a few of the reasons I would avoid New Year’s if I could:

1. That depressing song. “Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind” is a wonderful way to kick a holiday into high festive mode. “Should wrists be slashed and brains be fried” is a suitable follow-up, but Scottish poet Robert “Bobby” Burns decided to go with slightly more upbeat references to “flames of love extinguished” and “heart now grown so cold” instead. (These are the lines that most people just hum as the life of the party dons a lampshade and cha-chas across the room.) If you stick with the song long enough, you get to some happier stuff, but that’s like enduring hours of painful root canals to suck on a cold cherry Popsicle afterward.

2. That depressing hour. Waiting until midnight to celebrate a holiday is great if you’re a vampire or a late-night television talk show fan. (And really, what’s the difference?) If you follow Ben Franklin’s maxim of early to bed, early to rise, then you can hardly hope to wake up Jan. 1 healthy, wealthy and wise. Instead, you roll out of bed surly, burly, with bloodshot eyes. Why can’t the New Year arrive at a more civilized hour, like 6 p.m.?

3. That depressing meal. Pork’s all right, but sauerkraut? Ugh. Little strands of fiberglass warmed all day over low heat that taste like little strands of fiberglass warmed all day over low heat. And if you don’t eat some, the legend goes, you won’t be prosperous in the coming year. The only people who prosper from this tradition are the people who pluck sauerkraut off sauerkraut trees (maybe munchkins who were kicked out of the Lollipop Guild for behavior unbecoming to little people) and package it in those oily plastic bags. Is there a sauerkraut subsidy in the U.S., and do my taxes support it? I hope not.

4. Those depressing resolutions. No time like midnight to compile a laundry list of all our faults and failures and determine to fix them all, especially those of us who have been around long enough to do the same thing a few dozen times already, especially on stomachs full of sauerkraut and booze, which could make even the gastrointestinal equivalent of Old Ironsides swear off excess food and drink for the year – or at least the week.

Every year I make the same resolution: To be more tolerant and less judgmental. What does it mean? I don’t know exactly, but it shuts up anybody who asks and sends them skittering off in some other direction, and it’s better than saying you have no resolutions at all, which is like declaring yourself a Democrat in the middle of a GOP convention.

5. Those long winter days to come. When you sing “Auld Lang Syne,” you’re not only slamming the door on the last 12 months, but on the whole holiday season – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, Wear Brown Shoes Day and Oatmeal Muffin Day – and saying hello to long, cold months of winter, unrelieved by days off from work, which you couldn’t take anyway because you’re too busy paying off all the bills that you accrued in November and December.

Is there a “Bah, Humbug?” equivalent for New Year’s? I don’t think so – just another reason why it’s my least favorite holiday.


cschillig@the-review.com.

Living in the moment

This is circa 2011, but maybe earlier. 

At the close of each school year, I ask my Advanced Placement English seniors to write an essay modeled on National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” series. We share the essays on our final exam day, an experience I -- and hopefully they -- find more rewarding than yet another pencil-and-paper test. Because I never ask students to do something I’m unwilling to do, I write and share, too.

This summer, one of my former students (Hi, Sam!) sent me a message saying that he thought of my essay during a trying time. He didn’t know it, but his words reached me on a bad day and made it better. Our exchange became the impetus for my sharing the essay today. (Well, that and that fact that I’m just back from vacation and this is an easy way to meet a deadline.)

This may be schmaltzy, and people who know me well may wonder if I really feel this way. I do.

***

I believe in the power of right now, today.

Somewhere out there is a sunrise to watch, a mountain to scale, a pretty girl to kiss -- even on a wet Monday morning or a meeting-filled Wednesday afternoon.

Our 24/7 society has become so focused on “what’s next” that we forget about what’s now. In my generation, a really bad band called Loverboy sang “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend,” and damned if we didn’t believe them. We’ve become so concerned about hanging on until Friday that we neglect the importance of Tuesday, so intoxicated by the thought of sleeping in on Sunday that we overlook the joy of waking up before dawn on Thursday.

For 50 weeks out of the year, we strategize for the other two. We breathlessly anticipate maturation and graduation, only to reminisce with nostalgia a few years later about the carefree days of high school. We fantasize over meeting Mister or Miss Right, getting married, having 2.5 perfect kids, a suitably fat bank account, and a nice house in the suburbs, only to look back wistfully on the freedom of our college days when we had barely two dimes to rub together. We drag ourselves to work, dreaming of the day we can retire, only to bemoan the fact that we are retired, wishing we had something worthwhile to do.

A colleague hammered this point home a few years ago when he told me that he liked to live “in the moment” with each class he taught, to be fully there for students, responding to their questions and enjoying their interactions. It made me realize what I wasn’t doing, that in the back of my mind a little voice counted down the minutes until I could announce tomorrow’s homework assignment and reminded me of papers I had to grade. Since then, I’ve tried to change and become more attuned to life in the moment -- not always successfully, but I’m working on it.

I’m not sure, but it’s possible that our future-oriented obsession is a byproduct of marketing techniques. We are, after all, the most advertising-saturated society in the history of the world, having been exposed to an average of 40,000 sales pitches a year since childhood. And each of those messages is essentially the same: Your life will be better when you own that tricycle, bicycle, first car, or sports car; when you see that new film, read that new book, or download that new album; when you lose 20 pounds or gain 20 pounds or hide 20 pounds. People who are content and oriented in the present don’t buy; people who are discontented and oriented in the past or the future, do.

I believe that we need to reclaim the primacy of today. I believe that Mondays are inherently as good as Fridays, that three days before graduation is just as exciting as graduation day itself, that we can find something about each day and each moment -- from the smile of a friend to the feeling of satisfaction we get when helping others -- to make each day special.

Take time each day to enjoy where you are and to do something small but memorable. Blow the seeds of a dandelion. Take a friend to lunch. Play fetch with a dog. Re-read a favorite poem, or better yet, read a new one. We have only a limited number of “todays.” I believe it’s best to make each one count.

When Christmas spirits get political

Early on Christmas morning, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is awakened by three ghostly visitors.

Spirits: Joe! Joe! Joe!

Manchin: Mr. President? Is that you?

Spirits: No, we are the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future!

Manchin: Aren’t you supposed to come one at a time?

Christmas Past: Solo visits work better for covetous old sinners like Ebenezer Scrooge.

Christmas Present: But you, sir, are much worse.

Christmas Future: Much, much worse.

Manchin: Worse than a miser? How so?

Present: You have withheld support for the Build Back Better Plan, which would benefit your constituents and the nation.

Manchin: But I can’t vote yes. It would be a breach of my commitments.

Future: To who?

Present: To who?

Past: To whom?

Present: (aside to Future) That Christmas Past is certainly a stickler for grammar.

Present and Future: To WHOM?

Manchin: To my big-money donors in the fossil fuel industry! Oops, I mean the working people of West Virginia, who rely on me to protect their livelihoods.

Past: Build Back Better will provide for more jobs in clean energy!

Present: It will pay for child care and preschool for thousands of West Virginian children!

Future: It will provide for rental assistance and affordable housing!

Past: It will cut taxes for working families!

Present: It will expand healthcare coverage!

Future: It will expand school lunch programs!

Manchin: But the cost! Two trillion — maybe double that if Congress extends parts of it somewhere down the line. And I know those bleeding-heart progressives — they’ll argue that we have to make those provisions permanent! Even if it’s bad for business.

Past: Business?

Present: Mankind is your business.

Future: The common welfare is your business. Charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence …

Manchin: What in the dickens are you talking about?

Past: We’re talking about conflicts of interest, the half a million you made from investments in the coal industry in 2020 alone, according to the Washington Post.

Manchin: For spirits, you sure keep up on current events.

Future: Hey, what else is there to do? Otherwise, it’s all wearing the chains we forged in life, ya know?

Present: Your family works in coal, Senator!

Future: Their business sells waste coal to a West Virginian power plant. That plant pollutes and pollutes and pollutes …

Manchin: But it makes me a ton of money! I mean, it’s not a conflict because any money is in a blind trust. It’s legal! And Build Back Better is just too expensive!

Future: But Congress this month passed a $768 billion defense bill, $24 billion more than the Pentagon asked for. Passed without any concern over cost!

Manchin: With bipartisan support! Bipartisan support, spirits!

Past: We know.

Future: Which is why we will be visiting many more lawmakers tonight.

Present: Don’t forget all the GOP senators who don’t support Build Back Better. And all the candidates who refuse to acknowledge that President Biden won the election. We need to haunt them, too.

Past: Plus all the people who’ve decorated their Trump/Pence signs with Christmas lights.

Future: And columnists who rewrite “A Christmas Carol” and make it political.

Present: Oh, yeah, they’re the worst. Listen, Manchin, we gotta go. But you’re getting a lump of coal in your stocking this year. Boo.

Manchin: Coal? Excellent! I love coal!

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Blog Posts of Christmases Past

If you’re searching for snark this holiday season, here are some blog posts from previous Christmases.

• What If Santa Were Downsized? 
• Operation Fat Man
• Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays
• What Sweater Is This? 
• Get Ready for Porch Pirates: The Movie this holiday season
• Something’s Fishy about this Christmas Tradition
• A ‘Perfect’ Christmas
• When Christmas Spirits Get Political
• A Suspect Santa
• The Christmas Fish Lives!

The shameful 'Hunger Games' for teacher funding

Maybe “Crass for Cash” would have been a better name.

Organizers of a publicity stunt at a Sioux Falls Stampede hockey game had the best of intentions when they invited South Dakota teachers to crawl on the ice and stuff dollar bills down their shirts. Dubbed “Dash for Cash,” the event was designed to give educators money so they didn’t have to pay for school supplies out of their own pockets.

A spokesperson for CU Mortgage, the event’s sponsor, even called it “an awesome group thing to do” for the 10 teachers who were selected to run onto the rink, sink to their knees on a carpet and scramble for some of the $5,000 poured out of bags while the crowd cheered.

It was all over quickly. The teachers hoovered up the money like good public servants and popped back to their feet, shirts so stuffed with cash that they looked like Thanksgiving turkeys. One participant told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that the event was “really cool.”

Here’s something cooler. Next time, maybe they can tie the teachers’ hands behind their backs so that they have to gobble dollar bills with their teeth. Or give them hockey sticks to fight each other for the money, a la "The Hunger Games."

I mean, it’s for the kids, right?

At first, I thought it was just me, old and crotchety, who found the event crass. But it turns out a lot of other people did, too.

The whole hokey sideshow is symbolic of the state of education funding in 2021. Teachers, among the lowest paid professionals, often buy school supplies for their classrooms, making up shortfalls in spending through their own generosity.

The public praises this largesse during various teacher appreciation weeks, but then conveniently forgets it when education unions advocate for safer working conditions, more culturally responsive curriculums, smaller class sizes or — heaven forbid! — increased wages.

Suddenly, these same caring educators are characterized as rapacious predators, skipping off into lengthy summer vacations and holiday breaks, snapping up taxpayer dollars as efficiently as those ten South Dakota educators did on the ice last week.

It’s a cognitive dissonance — the angelic/demonic educator — and one with roots in an outmoded yet still pervasive view of the teaching profession as composed almost exclusively of young women, who should be submissive, maternal and willing to work for low wages because molding the next generation is its own reward and because they have husbands who make the real money.

So it’s OK for teachers to spend out of their own pockets, and they should be willing to crawl on ice, through broken glass, and across a sea of flames for a few extra bucks, and then grovel in gratitude to the sponsor who gives it.

Curiously, you don’t see CPAs running obstacle courses to make sure their clients have the necessary tax-prep software, doctors snatching currency in wind machines for new medical equipment, or soldiers holding bake sales to finance the latest weaponry. But teachers — aw, it’s cute to watch ’em shoving dollar bills down their tops like a PG version of a pole dancer.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Would it have been so hard for the sponsors of this hockey event to give 10 teachers a check for $500 each? Or would that have been too dignified?

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

What if Santa were downsized?

Christmas cheer, 2012-style! — CS

Boss: Santa, could I see you in my office for a minute?

Santa: Certainly, but I hope not for too long. It’s Dec. 27 and I’m exhausted from flying around the world and leaving presents for all good boys and girls. I’m ready for a long winter’s nap … and football.

Boss: That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.

Santa: Football? Hey, I know gambling on the workshop floor is prohibited. That Steelers/Browns thing a few weeks back was just a friendly wager between me and Sparkles the Elf. Won’t happen again.

Boss: It’s not that. See, it’s about your position here.

Santa: Position?

Boss: Yes. The board and I have been looking at our cash flow over the past quarter and weighing it against some rather hefty capital expenditures …

Santa: I’d hardly call some carrots for the reindeer and decent housing for the elves “hefty capital expenditures.”

Boss: From your perspective, perhaps. From ours, we barely made 3 percent more profit than last year, and that gets the stockholders jumpy. And when the stockholders get jumpy, the board gets jumpy. So …

Santa: You’re letting me go?

Boss: Letting you go? Goodness, no. You and your image are huge assets to the company. Why, in merchandising alone, that red hat, white beard and “Ho! Ho! Ho!” make us billions. See, Nick … I can call you Nick, can’t I?

Santa: I suppose.

Boss: Nick, we just plain can’t afford to have you working only one day a year.

Santa: One day a year? But, what about all the mall appearances? And a shopping season that starts in October? I’ve worked the last three months without a single day off and with no extra pay.

Boss: Well, have we required that from you, Nick?

Santa: No, not exactly. I mean … it comes with the territory, I guess.

Boss: Exactly. Now about these changes: Effective immediately, you will also double as Father Time on New Year’s Eve.

Santa: But that’s Bob’s job!

Boss: Bob has been … let go.

Santa: You fired him?

Boss: No, we … right-sized him. Now, he weighs less than you, but with a little squeezing, his 2012 sash should just about fit.

Santa: Hrrrmph. Why not put me in the Baby New Year role while you’re at it?

Boss: Some on the board wanted to do exactly that, the diaper’s too small. And while we’re at it, you’ll also be playing the role of Uncle Sam on the Fourth of July. Weight is a definite issue there, and since we subcontracted this job through the U.S. Department of Defense, we’ll need you to shed, say, 200 pounds between now and June.

Santa: But, but …

Boss: I know, I know … your image as a jolly old elf will be irreparably harmed if you stay thin. The good news is that between July 5 and July 25 -- Christmas in July, you know -- you’ll be mandated to put the weight back on.

Santa: Now just you wait a minute! I have rights too, you know? What about my contract? Santa’s a team player and all, but this is going too far!

Boss: Oh, you think so? Well, pursuant to Santa Clause Clause 102.7 -- the so-called Insanity Claus* -- the corporation has the right to modify your contract at any time, with no advance notice, and no input from you!

Santa: But … but … how can this be? I’ve always been a good employee! I’ve let millions of little kids sit on my knee and rub their sticky fingers through my beard! I’ve stuffed myself down chimney after chimney and never complained when the walls were stuffed with asbestos. I’ve ruined my health eating dozens of sugar cookies left beside glasses of milk! I’ve even smoked that ridiculous pipe in defiance of the surgeon general’s warnings! How can you do this to me?

Boss: It’s easy, Santa. See, the company has reorganized and moved its home offices to Michigan. Merry Christmas, at-will employee! Now, let’s talk about Mrs. Claus, shall we? She’s been quite the drain on our self-funded healthcare plan this year …




chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

* Thanks to the Marx Brothers for this one.

Operation Fat Man

From way back in 2008! — CS

To: President George W. Bush

From: Homeland Security

Re: Operation Fat Man

This Christmas, the U.S. intelligence community has the opportunity to capture and/or neutralize alleged terrorist, “S. Claus.”

To avoid negative publicity associated with previous intelligence debacles, we have thoroughly vetted said dissident – invoking, as the Brothers Marx call it, the “Sanity Clause” – and found his activities highly suspicious. Working with a diminutive faction known as elves, he is said to create knock-off versions of brand-name toys, electronics and clothing for delivery through a system that circumvents traditional retailing. Need we remind you of the importance of retailing money to Republican campaigns and the influence of the retailers’ lobby?

Claus is said to gain illegal ingress both into the country and onto the roofs of millions of homes by means of a biologically powered aviation system that resembles a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. A possible ninth reindeer, one Rue Dolph (a German cohort?), is rumored but not confirmed. This sled may use cutting-edge stealth technology to elude radar detection.

Worse, Claus is able to enter the homes of decent, God-fearing Americans through their chimneys. How a person of his girth can accomplish such a feat is unknown, although we suspect a “magic dust” supplied by a Mexican drug cartel.

The target has established a base in a polar mountain hideaway. There, wearing a communist-inspired suit of red, Claus directs a complex disinformation campaign designed to eradicate religion from the Yuletide season and replace it with secular humanism, whatever that is. Given our administration’s attempts to erode the separation of church and state through so-called faith-based initiatives, his actions are nearly treasonous, as he forces the masses to turn even further from what you had hoped would be the official state faith, Christianity. (And not the wimpy New Testament variety, either, but the old-school, eye-for-an-eye stuff.)

A direct link between the activities of Claus and Osama bin Laden has yet to be established, but our cryptologists – no, Mr. President, they study secret writing, not tombs – have discovered that replacing the “m” in Osama with “nt” results in O’Santa, surely no coincidence. This has led to a massive NSA wiretapping effort against both American Muslims and Irish Americans, because knee-jerk reactions initiated by little evidence are our specialty.

Complicating our efforts to gather reliable intelligence about the suspect is his habit of placing duplicates of himself in malls and at non-profit charity fundraisers nationwide. These thousands of Santa simulacrums have yielded little information when subjected to the few interrogation methods that bleeding-heart liberals haven’t exposed as torture. Even playing Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine songs at eardrum-shattering decibels has not dissuaded them from their cover story – that they are ordinary, everyday Americans earning extra money for the holidays. Fat chance.

Mr. President, in these waning days of your administration, we urge you to declare all-out war against the North Pole and dedicate 100 percent of the nation’s available military and law enforcement resources to finding and stamping out the rogue Claus movement. Under separate cover, we are sending you a detailed plan to scour the eastern seaboard with F-22 Raptors and eliminate this scourge. We considered allowing Vice President Cheney to ride along and pull the trigger, but we feared he might take out one of our own operatives instead.

Once the American public understands this operation is vital to national security, we believe it will erase the missteps of the last eight years and cement your legacy as a tough-talking Texan with the strength of his convictions.

Whatever you decide, sir, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and the missus. We hope you enjoy the fruitcake. Leave any leftovers in the fridge for Obama.




E-mail cschillig@the-review.com.

What we search and write about says so much

’Tis the season for media behemoths and search-engine companies to release lists.

Bestselling books, most downloaded songs, popular words — if you can count it during the year, you can send it out as a press release in December.

Google joined this parade of quantifiability this week with a video recap, “The Year in Search 2021.” It opened with the unsurprising observation that users searched “how to heal” more often this year than in the past.

I say “unsurprising” because if you’ve been paying attention to the people around you, you’ve noticed more of them than usual are hurting.

The media has been awash in coverage of mental health in the last few months. Tales of people coping or failing to cope. The stressors of a pandemic and financial uncertainty. Anxieties about going back to in-person jobs or school.

But I don’t need Google or the evening news to tell me this. All I need to do is count research papers.

An assignment that produces more than its share of angst each semester has recently inspired an overabundance of essays about mental health. I’ve seen it with my students in both high school and college. At least a third of the 100 or so papers I’ve read this month deal with some aspect of anxiety or depression.

The most popular single subject has been social media’s effect on mental health. This is not surprising given the Facebook/Instagram whistleblowing earlier this year, happening just as students were selecting topics. But I’ve also read essays with other mental health focuses: PTSD and veterans, therapy animals, the effect of money on happiness, relationship failure, and how parents’ decision to spank or not to spank affects their children.

While none of these topics are necessarily new, the approach has changed. Fewer papers dwell solely on the causes of stress or anxiety, while more time and space is allotted to recovery. This change in emphasis is saddening in one respect — the societal equivalent of saying “hey, stuff happens” — but hopeful in another, a recognition that no situation is so intractable that it can’t be improved.

This semester’s emphasis on mental health topics could be a chicken-or-egg scenario, I suppose. Is mental health top of mind because it’s covered so often by the media, which then influences students’ papers? Or is all that media coverage a reflection of boots-on-the-ground reality, which is also manifested in my students’ topics?

The truth is probably somewhere between. Still, it is hard to deny changes in the scope of the mental health problem. The non-profit Mental Health America notes that suicidal ideation was on the rise in 2021, and that “the percentage of adults with a mental illness who report unmet need for treatment has increased every year since 2011.”

Additionally, the New York Times recently reported a 30-percent increase in American overdose deaths, which topped 100,000 from May 2020 to April 2021, a grim milestone. The figure, the paper notes, is “more than the toll of car crashes and gun fatalities combined.”

It is often said that suicides increase near the holidays, but this is not accurate. Suicide attempts decrease at Christmastime and peak in the summer months. Still, the warning signs should never be overlooked.

If anything, this extra focus on mental health — in students, the media and the larger society — is welcome, whatever the origins. The more people talk about it, the more people normalize it, decreasing a stigma that contributes to far too many people avoiding treatment.

Which is a tragedy waiting to happen in any season.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays

From 2013, here's a look at Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays. — CS

Friends who know I am not religious will sometimes ask if I’m offended by the term, “Merry Christmas.”

That’s ridiculous. It’s not ridiculous that they ask, mind you, but that anybody would take offense to an expression — any expression — that wishes happiness to another.

This War Against Christmas that certain segments of the media (Fox News, I’m talking to you) accuse liberals of waging is really just a political version of the TV weather scam.

You know what I’m talking about: Television executives have realized that talking up the weather is great for ratings, which means that every flurry and icy patch merits its own scrolling alert along the bottom of our screens, accompanied by an announcement to stay tuned for school closings.

In the old days, when we determined weather by sticking our heads out the window and looking up, we didn’t need constant warnings to be cautious and that road conditions could change at any time. We just figured it out.

The same thing with “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.” Somewhere, some broadcasters and politicians recognized that talking about taking Christ out of Christmas — and secular society’s decision to wish “Seasons Greetings” to honor the diversity of beliefs among constituents — was good for ratings, and that people would stay tuned for long, circuitous arguments and/or rants about the topic. Some of us will even vote for particular candidates if they espouse a strong enough view of America as a Christian nation around the holidays, despite whatever shenanigans they are up to the rest of the year.

But in the old days, we could hear “Merry Christmas,” “Season’s Greetings,” “Happy Holidays,” “Happy Hanukkah” or “Happy Kwanzaa” and recognize it was merely a speaker’s way of sharing his or her own joy, not a personal attack. We didn’t need any conservatives or liberals to translate for us, and we didn’t need to bristle and announce ourselves as Christians or Jews or atheists or space aliens or whatever. We just smiled and said, “Thanks, same to you.”

There, isn’t that easy?

On a related note, people sometimes ask me why I bother to celebrate Christmas at all, as I am not a believer in the “reason for the season.” This is also a fair question.

The bottom line is that much of what passes for Christmas these days is not, in point of fact, religious. Even fixing Jesus’ birthday as Dec. 25 has more to do with early Christianity’s attempts to attach itself to a pagan celebration of the sun than to any historical record. Our modern mythology of Santa, Rudolph, elves, talking snowmen and the like demonstrates that religious and non-religious elements of the holiday have made an uneasy peace, mixing and mingling over the years like ingredients in a pot of stew. (The most repulsive example of this cross-pollination are those painted images of Santa kneeling before the manger.)

I wonder how so many people square their bloated, consumer Christmas (complete with running over their fellow men with shopping carts to get to a big deal) with recent comments from Pope Francis warning against excessive capitalism. Shopping until we drop doesn’t seem particularly spiritual to me, but what does an old pagan know?

Our reasons to celebrate are multi-faceted, then. Some see Christmas as a monument to the birth of a person who came to redeem humanity, some as a gift-grab, others as an excuse to hum “Frosty the Snowman” under their breaths, and still others as a season to brighten an otherwise dark and dreary time of year. That last is my “reason for the season,” along with being happy for my friends and family who find a deeper reason. While some may decry my choices as sad and superficial, they suffice for me.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I don’t take offense to Merry Christmas or Season’s Greetings or even Happy Festivus (for the rest of us). Anytime somebody reaches beyond themselves to extend sincere wishes, that’s cause for happiness in my book.

So whatever you celebrate, enjoy.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig at Twitter

What sweater is this?

From 2018, another Christmas column. — CS 

Cows with reindeer antlers.

Cats sporting snowflake pajamas.

An elf, patterned after the bad boy from those Ford bumper stickers, “writing” Noel on yellow snow.

Some trends, not even the Internet can quantify.

Ugly Christmas sweaters are one example. After a recent foray to a retail giant where a tacky top set me back $20, I did an online search to learn how how huge the seasonal-sweater industry has become.

Surprisingly, I found few recent numbers.

Oh, I discovered many stories about the craze. One, from Alaina Demopoulos at Daily Beast, talks about the 26,000 holiday sweaters sold from September to November this year on eBay alone.

Another, from Crain’s Detroit Business, focuses on UglyChristmasSweater.com. The company expects to grow its sales 35 percent this year, shipping between $6.5 to $7 million in holiday-themed apparel.

In 2016, GQ reported that “stores move tens of millions of novelty knits every holiday season.” That same year, CNBC did a story on the startup company Tipsy Elves, noting that five-year sales had topped $20 million.

But no source gave an overall estimate of how much money Americans are expected to spend to look tacky over the next week or so. Maybe because it’s just too embarrassing for even the “fake” news media to report.

Call me a purist, but I believe a sweater is ugly only to the extent that somebody else finds it beautiful. When companies begin to design intentionally repulsive clothing, they miss two essential holiday ingredients — love and sincerity.

Think about it: In the days of old, when dear old Aunt Ida — and didn’t everybody have an Aunt Ida? — gave you a tacky sweater, she sincerely believed it was gorgeous. She thought it would make you look splendiloquent as you went about your holiday business — shopping, caroling, cleaning grease traps. She didn’t send a sweater because she thought it was hideous or because she wanted to embarrass you.

And you wore it out of a dreary, but laudable, sense of duty. Because you knew, deep in your heart of hearts, that’s what Aunt Ida wanted. It's the same reason Americans eat fruitcake — not because we like it, but because we have to.

If I may mix my holidays, it reminds me of Linus from “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” He’s camping out in the pumpkin patch, certain the Great Pumpkin will grace him with his (its?) presence.

“He’s gotta pick this one,” Linus asserts. “He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”

Ugly Christmas sweaters were much the same — a sincere attempt to give a loving gift. But no more. Now, you can’t be sure if the Aunt Idas of the world are mocking recipients with their sweater choices.

Think of little Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” mortified by the pink bunny pajamas from his Aunt Clara. If the movie took place today, audiences would be forced to consider Aunt Clara’s gift as cutting commentary on her nephew.

Hypocrisy as far as the eye can see.

But what do I know? Maybe Aunt Ida has always selected sweaters because they’re grotesque. Maybe she’s just that twisted and bitter after Uncle Charlie ran off with the meter maid.

And regardless of what I might believe about the sad state of sincerity at the holidays, I too participated in the ugly sweater craze, selecting an image of two dinosaurs in Santa hats dancing under a disco ball.

The damn thing lights up, too.

It would be just my luck to electrocute myself on Christmas Eve. Maybe they can bury me in my newest ugly sweater.

Aunt Ida, I’ll tell Uncle Charlie you said Merry Christmas.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Get ready for Porch Pirates: The Movie this holiday season

From 12-19-19, here is a column of Christmas past. — CS

Christmas movies on Lifetime have borrowed a trick from Marvel.

In many films on the network this season, characters are delayed by Winter Storm Megan (or Meghan), leading to speculation that they all take place in a LIfetime Cinematic Universe, similar to how all Marvel movies take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

So with a connection, however tenuous, between Lifetime and Marvel, how long before an enterprising producer pitches a Lifetime Christmas superhero movie?

It’s not such a stretch, really. Christmas has always had a connection with the supernatural, going all the way back to the original Bible story. After all, what is the Nativity if not an origin story for Jesus, a man who later walks on water and spontaneously resurrects?

In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens gives readers ghosts and time travel among all the Victorian trappings of the holiday.

And Santa Claus, the jolly old elf himself, must have abilities far beyond those of ordinary mortals to manufacture all those toys and then transport and deliver them in one night. To say nothing of the laws of physics he violates with a sleigh propelled by flying reindeer.

So a Christmas superhero is a natural.

I’m thinking Yule Man, dressed all in green with a red cape, the Mastercard logo emblazoned across his chest. His powers include zooming from store to store, clearing snow-filled parking lots and helping elderly customers carry bags to their cars.

Rocketed to Earth as an infant from the doomed planet Tinsel, he was raised by kindly Dollar General managers to use his great powers to support American capitalism and shoddily-made foreign imports.

His x-ray vision can tell shoppers when a doorbuster is truly sold out or when there are more ferreted away in the stockroom. And his super hearing can detect the true identity of every Secret Santa.

Or maybe XMas-Men, a team of mutants born with enhanced shopping genes, who can conspicuously consume from 12:01 a.m. on Black Friday right through Boxing Day on Dec. 26. Shunned by most of humanity, they nonetheless are responsible for almost single handedly driving up the GNP and moving retailers out of the red and into the black.

Of course, what are superheroes without villains?

The Porch Pirates don’t even have to be invented, and they already have an alliterative name and a hissable modus operandi.

A battle between Yule Man and the Porch Pirates could be pretty epic, raging above residential neighborhoods before moving into more urban areas, where the two sides could punch each other into buildings and buses, all while shouting lines like, “You’ll never get this box of shrink-wrapped fruitcakes, Yule Man!” Eventually, Yule Man must say, “Delivery complete!” as he knocks out the last pirate.

One problem is that Lifetime Christmas movies have notoriously low budgets, so typical superhero shenanigans aren’t feasible. Plus, any storyline in the movies, from magic shoes to saving a cultural landmark, must take a backseat to a budding romance between the two leads.

So our hypothetical superhero movie must involve an enterprising female reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the town’s new hero, who is performing random acts of kindness. She is competing for this scoop against a rival male reporter who looks like the stud on the cover of every GQ.

The stud is eventually revealed as Yule Man, who along the way falls in love with the heroine and yadda yadda yadda, Winter Storm Megan, yadda yadda yadda, true love always.

I already have a title: “Christmas Cape-ers.” Get it?

It seems like a winner. In the true spirit of Christmas, does anybody have a couple of million they’d like to invest?

chris.schillig@yahoo.com



@cschillig on Twitter

Something's fishy about this Christmas tradition

From Dec. 19, 2020, here is the story of my family's Christmas preoccupation with fish. As a bonus, I've linked to my imitation of Ringo Starr's infamous "peace and love" message.

Every family, I’m convinced, no matter how straitlaced and proper, has an oddball holiday tradition.

For my family, it is fish.

Not a Christmas Day meal. Not an expedition where we cut a hole in an icy lake and squat in a shanty, waiting for a nibble on our cane poles.

No, this is a ceramic fish.

It is a cross between Big Mouth Billy Bass and Flounder from Disney’s “Little Mermaid,” if the latter were drawn by a singularly untalented four-year-old and bereft of any aesthetic appeal.

Technically, this hideous sculpture is a koi (not the real McKoi), but I’m not one to carp about labels. Whatever it is, it is truly horrific, with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth questing upward, ever upward, in search of some elusive worm. Or possibly human flesh.

The fish travels back and forth between our house and my sister-in-law and her husband’s house each year, sometimes wrapped as a gag gift — emphasis on the gag — and sometimes secreted outside, on top of a car, or dangling from a tree.

Legend has it this piscine monstrosity was once the size of a tennis ball, but has been painted so many times over the years it has ballooned to its present size, roughly the dimensions of Rosemary’s Baby or some other dark denizen of the netherworld.

One year, the fish was pink and teal. Another, it was yellow and black, a nod to a certain team in Pittsburgh whose name shall not be spoken. Occasionally, it has been adorned with battery-operated lights or pinwheels or pictures of loved ones in compromising positions. (OK, not that compromising — we’re not that kind of family.)

Two years ago, my wife and I plastered peace and love stickers across its scaly surface and affixed it with a QR code. The code led to a YouTube video where I imitated Ringo Starr’s passive-aggressive message to fans to stop mailing him merchandise to be signed. We shipped the fish special delivery, requiring a signature by the recipient.

This was where I learned two horrible lessons. First, marking “fragile” sixteen times on a box is still no guarantee mailroom gorillas won’t play catch with a package. Second, ceramic fish can break.

The fish arrived a few days before Christmas in pieces. (I am tempted to say “in Pisces.”) Photos were sent. Services were arranged. The fish, we assumed, would receive a burial at sea. Another custom lost to the vagaries of the USPS.

But it was not to be. By Christmas Day, the fish had been resurrected, shades of Danny DeVito’s Penguin, who bragged to Batman that “a lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference.”

Not tape, but glue allowed my in-laws to stitch Frankenfish back together and re-gift it, with bolts on each side of its neck. Later that year, they stole it out of our house on Mother’s Day and gave it to us again last Christmas. This time, it was green, white and red, wearing a tie.

It has lived a hellish half-life in our basement ever since, awaiting another chance to rise and thwart our revels.

My wife and I are plotting what to do with Mr. Chips this year, aware time is running out, especially if we want to find a way to get it inside our victims’ … er, family’s house without them knowing. Thank goodness they don’t read the paper.

Some years, I’ll be honest, the fish has been a damn — or is it dam? — nuisance. But this year, when so many other traditions have been postponed or canceled, it has provided a sense of continuity and familiarity, an activity we can complete in isolation and deliver while social distancing.

Provided the backdoor key we have still works.

Shhh. Don’t tell. And Happy Haddock Days to you and yours.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Where in the world is ... ?

The ideal place for me to live is Hilo, Hawaii.

This is not random musing. No, it’s science, baby! Or maybe pseudo-science. OK, maybe just a silly online quiz.

But said quiz has a better pedigree than many. For one thing, it doesn’t seem to be fishing — or is that phishing? — for personal data. By contrast, some Facebook “quizzes” ask you to input your age and birthday in exchange for learning what movie star you resemble or which cartoon character shares your personality. Those are sketchy, especially when my matinee match is Paul Reubens as PeeWee Herman and my cartoon caricature is Homer Simpson.

But I digress. This particular quiz, called “Where Should You Live?,” is from The New York Times, You can Google it if it isn’t behind a paywall, if you’re confident that brushing up against a liberal publication won’t turn you blue forever, and if my publisher is copacetic with a plug for a news rival.

Click a few preferences to get started. Click some preferences twice to indicate their importance.

For me, double-clicks were “commute” (as in, a short one) and “health care” (I’m not getting any younger). Single clicks went to “schools,” “air quality,” and “less snow,” among others. (Hey, I’m not revealing all my secrets.)

If I limit the results to the Northeast, I say aloha to Hawaii and hello to Arlington, New York, population 3,674.

(I just learned “aloha” means both hello and goodbye in Hawaiian, so it makes sense for a Hawaiian city to be my top match, as I seldom know if I’m coming or going.)

If I limit results again to the Midwest, then I’m bound for Peoria, Illinois, with a much larger population of 113,532.

So from Hawaii to New York to Illinois. Talk about around the world in a daze.

For kicks, I searched for my current location — Alliance, Ohio — on the quiz’s database. It was only a 50 percent match for me, compared to Hilo’s 88 percent. Alliance’s attributes include “affordability” and average price per square foot for homeownership ($76).

“Summer in Alliance is hot,” the site says. “Winter is cold and very snowy.” Accurate, if unappealing.

The Carnation City also ranks 7/10 for commute, 9/10 for health care, and 10/10 for air quality.

Less inviting are availability of live music, 4/10; income mobility, 3/10; low crime, 3/10; and jobs, 2/10. I was surprised that Alliance only earned a 5/10 for trees, especially since it has been designated as a Tree City for the last 39 years, according to the Arbor Day Foundation’s website. I was not surprised by its mountain rating, a 0/10. Flat to a fault.

This is the point where the columnist leaps to an obligatory defense of his adopted hometown, if “adopted” is the right descriptor for a place I’ve lived the majority of my life, yet managed through an accident of geography to avoid being born in.

Alliance, like all places, has its strengths and weaknesses. It is also greater than the sum of its parts. These expressions are also obligatory (and cliche), but that doesn’t make them less heartfelt.

My wife and I have pondered on occasion a move away from northeast Ohio — but never, it must be said, to Hilo, Hawaii. What keeps us here is largely entropy, to be sure, but also family, fulfilling careers and a fondness for the people and the area.

I mean, where else can you be mowing the grass in shorts one weekend and then salting down ice sheets in your driveway the next?

And what other city has Polinori’s? Worth a trip if you haven’t been. Worth a trip if you have.

Besides, who puts much stock in an online quiz, anyway?

Not even editors for The New York Times, who admit their quiz is “absolutely” biased and that if you check enough boxes, “you’ll start to match with more and more places in California, the country’s most populous state.”

No thanks. Maybe I’m the biased one, but I’ll stick with Alliance.

Reach Chris chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig

Failed flight in a fallen world

“Intertextuality” wasn’t discussed around many Thanksgiving dinner tables. Nor did shoppers use the term as they jockeyed for parking spaces on Black Friday. But the word is nonetheless salient.

Oxford Languages defines intertextuality as “the relationship between texts, especially literary ones.” It was first coined by critic Julia Kristeva in 1966, although the concept has been in existence since the first time a creator referenced another work.

One example of intertextuality is “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” a painting from roughly 1560, perhaps by an imitator of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. (The provenance is complicated.) It depicts a busy pastoral scene — plowman in the foreground, shepherd gazing up at the sky, mountains and cities and sea in the background.

Tucked away in the bottom right corner, almost as an afterthought, is Icarus, his waxen wings melted by the sun, sinking to his death in the waters near a masted boat.

One could enjoy the painting without knowing the myth of Icarus and Daedelus and their failed attempt to fly. It is, after all, an arresting piece. (Daedelus is unseen, but critics conjecture that the gazing shepherd looks up at him as he plummets earthward to join his son.)

The painting means more, however, when the viewer appreciates the allusion, the intertextuality between myth and art.

In 1938, W.H. Auden ratcheted up this intertextuality by making the painting the subject of his poem, “Musee des Beaux-Arts.” By describing the nonchalance of the plowman toward Icarus, Auden underscores how one person’s tragedy can mean little to somebody else: “how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster.” For the plowman, the sun is shining and seeds must be sown. For the boat’s passengers and crew, a journey awaits. Nobody has time for the drowning of a stranger.

A similar observation could be made about the daily news, where even the most horrific reports elicit little more than a shaking of the head and a clucking of the tongue. Robert Frost’s “Out, Out—,” about the accidental death of a rural boy, ends with a similarly stark observation: the survivors, “since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.” It is a moment that we, much like the ancient plowman or shepherd, can relate to. Not callousness exactly, but rather a recognition of both our inability to reverse the outcome and the pressing nature of our own concerns.

I am ruminating on intertextuality in part because it is central to an essay I assigned to my students this week. Yet I’ve also come to realize that my preoccupation is a clumsy way of groping toward some understanding of tragedies like the one in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

The quick dissemination of news has transformed all of us, to some extent, into either indifferent plowmen or passively observant shepherds. We are witnesses to tragedy who lack the agency to do much, if anything, to help. The staunchest security procedures are not guaranteed to stop somebody from driving through a parade and killing the participants, and no amount of empathy can restore the fallen to their families and friends.

The solution is not to cancel parades or institute draconian procedures before all public events. The takeaway may be simply that tragedies are part and parcel of life.

When they occur as a chapter in our own stories — with our own people and in our own communities — we mourn more keenly and help more directly. But when they occur outside our sphere of influence, to other people in other places, our responses are, of necessity, more proscribed. We recognize, of course, our shared humanity. We can donate to causes that will help. Those with a belief in the power of prayer can certainly direct their efforts there. Yet few of us can drop our plows or reassign our shepherding duties to intervene in other ways.

Perhaps this real-world intertextuality — the confluence of outside tragedy with our own lives — is a reminder to cherish what we have today and to recognize its fragility and preciousness. After all, we aren’t always the plowman or shepherd.

At some point, we are Icarus, our wings aflame, the harsh sun burning hot above us, the bottomless sea below.

Memories of Black Fridays past

This Black Friday column originally ran in 2012.

Next year, let’s just call it Black November and be finished with it.

I mean, really, retailers started Christmas pitches in September this year, and Santa, elves and tinsel have shared shelf space with jack o'lanterns, American flags and Hallmark-style pictures glorifying the genocide of Native Americans ever since, depending on whatever “minor” holiday was in vogue while the Christmas carnival of capitalism (to borrow a headline from the New York Times) rolled on.

It would be more honest to forget other holidays altogether and celebrate Christmas all year long -- Fourth of Christmas July and Valentine’s Christmas and Memorial XMas and the 12 Labor Days of Christmas and so on, ad nauseum.

This year, retailers steamrolled right over Thanksgiving to get to Black Friday, our new secular celebration, with some stores opening Thanksgiving morning and then closing, only to open later on Thanksgiving night and then closing so they could open again before the chickens -- but after the turkeys -- the next day.

And, hey, I’m just as guilty as the next guy. My wife and I were out Thanksgiving night, when I thought that maybe only a few dozen other stalwart, nigh-near heretical souls would eschew the hypnotic glow of televised football to sully the memory of the feast day by shopping. Surprisingly, we were two of thousands who did the same thing.

There we were, outside the local Big Box in a line that stretched sinuously down the sidewalk, across an access drive and into the strip mall next door. My wife, naively thinking that management would let valued customers wait inside the building before taking our money, didn’t bring a coat, so I gallantly offered mine, making a cacophony of chattering teeth the soundtrack for the 50-minute wait.

Once we were granted access to the showroom by off-duty police officers who acted as though they’d rather be raiding a neighborhood crack house instead of maintaining law and order among value-hungry hordes, we found ourselves waiting in still another line.

Make that two lines. My wife went in one direction for the cheap blu-ray player, while I took up residence near the instant potatoes, behind 200 or so other people waiting for the cheap TVs.

That’s where I met Flatulence Man, who must have devoured some bad Butterball earlier in the day based on how he used a sales circular to fan his deadly fumes throughout the aisle.

“Better stay back,” he warned, after a particularly loud blast. “I’m blowin em out.”

Meanwhile, his partner, Motorized Scooter Woman, zipped in and out of line to pick up more bargains. She returned once with barely enough room to stay on the scooter. FM dutifully stacked it all in his cart.

Somewhere in the second hour of waiting, FM and MSW began squabbling about his selfishness. (Other customers were handing him items they didn’t want -- a GPS unit and some walkie-talkie-looking things among them. Hell, I got into the spirit myself and gave him a pair of portable DVD players just to see if he’d take them. He did.)

As the line began to move, a guilt-stricken FM divested himself of merchandise like a stripper removing unwanted clothes. He handed some items to unsuspecting store clerks and dumped others on the floor and shelves. Nothing appeased Scooter Woman, though, who angrily revved off to parts unknown, leaving FM one person short for the two TVs he wanted.

Somewhere in there -- maybe between the stale turkey farts and the malfunctioning scanner in Checkout Lane 20 that made checkout last another hour -- my Christmas spirit died. Not that I had much to begin with.

I’m sure a lesson can be found about conspicuous consumption, how we Americans -- many of us, anyhow -- allow ourselves to be treated like cows in a slaughter chute to save a few bucks on junk we don’t really need or want just because Big Business has successfully preached the Gospel of Greed and converted us to the Church of Consumer Science -- can I get an amen? -- or how we should protect the sanctity of Thanksgiving and refuse to shop on that day.

But, frankly, I’m too tired from all that line-waiting and box-carting and spending to be too profound.

All I can say is that once I was back in the parking lot, I looked up to heaven, shook my fist at the glowing neon of the Big Box sign and swore, “Never again.”

Until next year.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com @cschillig on Twitter

Less attitude with the gratitude this Thanksgiving

I often suggest headlines to my editor. My suggestion for this one was "Beware toxic gratitude this Thanksgiving," and that 's the one that was used. But I should have gone with the headline I used here instead. Oh well. 

The dangers of toxic positivity are well documented.

Society at large is starting to understand that we cannot wish away other people’s problems by coaxing them to smile, telling them things aren’t that bad or urging them to play happy music on the radio.

Julia Wuench, writing earlier this month about “Toxic Positivity in the Workplace” for Forbes, lists a plethora of platitudes used in just this way. Among them are “Stop being negative,” “everything happens for a reason,” and “tough it out.”

In full disclosure, I’ve used all of these with family, colleagues and students. My heart was in the right place. I believed I was helping, but I wasn’t.

For the longest time, I thought I was the only person who got annoyed if somebody tried to cheer me up when I was wrestling with a seemingly intractable problem. Turns out I’m not.

Unsolicited, toxic positivity causes me to grit my teeth, grin and say thanks, or walk away before I throttle the unwitting advice giver. I’m sure my impromptu pep talks have inspired similar reactions.

A better alternative, says Wuench, is to “flip the script.” Invite the person to explain their challenge in more detail. Then, express true empathy and offer to actually help them, if it’s in your power to do so.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I wonder if we won’t see the kissing cousin of toxic positivity. Call it toxic gratitude.

You know the drill. Everybody around the table has to say one thing they are thankful for, and it can’t be that Uncle Festus, the handsy pervert, is seated far enough away that he can’t caress your forearm during the meal.

Again, the intentions are good, but the results … not so much. Forcing somebody to dig deep for a moment of gratitude can be as problematic as the seemingly innocuous comments to “cheer up” and “look at the bright side.”

For one thing, you risk learning just how materialistic your family is, as Grandma raves about her Mercedes or cousin Lindy gushes about his over-performing stocks.

For another, the practice threatens to capsize the fragile détente around the table when some (half)wits express gratitude for their MAGA support group and others are glad that the family Karen didn’t melt down in line at the grocery store the day before.

More importantly, however, in a year that has taken a toll on mental health like no other, some guests may not be in the proper frame of mind to demonstrate gratitude. Much like telling a coworker to “suck it up” or “put on your big-boy pants,” pointing out blessings in other people’s lives isn’t going to instigate an epiphany. If anything, it will make them feel worse because they now know their family thinks of them as ungrateful schmucks.

Plus, for some people, Thanksgiving isn’t such a grand holiday even in the best of times. Many Indigenous peoples don’t find much to celebrate about a day that ignores or sugarcoats the senseless slaughter of their ancestors by Euro-Americans, whose descendants will somehow convince themselves that naming sports teams after these tribes is an honor.

For others, this holiday — or any holiday — is a reminder of happier times with people who are no longer in their lives, separated by death, distance or dissatisfaction. They can put on a happy face and mumble the right things, but not easily.

Since I run the risk of being branded an Eeyore or of trying to cancel Thanksgiving, I hasten to add that I plan to enjoy the day by consuming unwholesome amounts of turkey, dressing and noodles in the company of family. If that’s what you do too, then have at it.

All I’m saying is that maybe we could skip the pre-meal humble-brag. Or at least tweak the wording so that we ask if anybody has something they’d like to share. No pressure, coaxing, or reminders about how we have it so much better than Person X in Place Y or Situation Z.

And that maybe we could spare a moment, somewhere among the Macy’s Parade, football and food, to recognize and validate other perspectives, including the ones that find nothing in particular to be thankful for at present.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig

This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Chris Schillig: Beware toxic gratitude this Thanksgiving

Better to be ignorant than ill-informed

I don’t know.

Three little words that are hard to say, and arguably getting harder.

For some people, admitting ignorance — in the purest, most non-judgmental sense of the word — when so much information is literally in the palms of their hands, is slothful. Far better to Google it. Or say “Hey, Siri.” Or ask Alexis.

The proliferation of so much knowledge means never having that nagging sensation in the back of the brain, like an itch that can’t be easily scratched, about the name of a particular song, TV show or historical event.

Used to be, you had to wait to get to a library or to a friend who could tell you the first Elvis single, the Twilight Zone episode where Burgess Meredith breaks his glasses at the end, or the date of the Hindenburg disaster.

There is humility in “I don’t know,” a concession of uncertainty, an admission that you don’t have the time, inclination or capacity to understand. Followed by “but I’ll find out,” it’s also an invitation to further learning and discussion.

Nowadays, however, “I don’t know” is often followed by a few taps on the computer in your pocket and an answer. That it may not always be the right answer is sometimes overshadowed by the sheer number of searches through the endless filing cabinets of cyberspace — some 5.6 billion inquiries a day on Google alone — and the speed with which such searches are made.

This convenience may be to blame for the degradation of another expression: “doing my own research.”

Once upon a time, “doing my own research” meant reading books and magazine articles on a topic and perhaps consulting with somebody in the field. The expertise accrued by self-taught individuals rarely extended past their own three feet of influence; many would have been comfortable building their own sheds, for example, but few would have the moxy to build a skyscraper, where people outside their own families could be jeopardized by shoddy architecture and construction.

I can remember my great-uncle “doing his own research” before taking a pledge in church not to see R-rated films or before deciding which truck to buy. He relied on finding somebody who knew more than he did, either in print or in person, and then weighing that person’s judgment.

Today, though, far too many people who are “doing their own research” seek validation for what they already believe, usually among like-minded people with little expertise on social media. One of the more accurate memes of recent months shows “vaccine research” conducted by a white-jacketed worker in a high-tech lab, contrasted with “anti-vaccine research,” conducted by a woman sitting on the toilet, smartphone in hand.

If the latter were reading the research of the former, the problem wouldn’t be so acute. But the implication is that the potty-squatter is relying on professional football players, disgraced politicians, and the like, many of whom are similarly operating in an echo chamber of misinformation, building online skyscrapers atop shaky foundations and filling the suites with gullible tenants.

What “doing my own research” should mean is spending time discovering what the most authoritative voices in a given field are saying about a subject. It should mean learning to distinguish strong evidence from spurious evidence, rigorous scientific study from unsupported personal opinion.

When I tell my students that research should begin with a question to which they don’t know the answer but are curious to learn, some balk. They believe they should start with a claim they already believe, and then find sources that support it.

But putting the cart of conclusions before the horse of research is part of the reason we are in such a mess today, with irrelevant personal opinions carrying as much weight as data-driven results.

It is not a weakness to seek out answers from acknowledged experts, recognizing that their conclusions may not always align with our private beliefs. Nor is it a disgrace to sometimes say “I don’t know.”

By the way, the first Elvis single is “That’s All Right,” the Twilight Zone episode is “Time Enough at Last” and the Hindenburg disaster was May 6, 1937. At least that’s what Google tells me, and it can’t be wrong if it’s on the Internet, right?

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com, and @cschillig on Twitter.