The thrill of the hill

This was originally published in The Alliance Review in 2006. A student's essay about rollercoasters reminded me of it, so I decided to dust it off and send it out into the world again.

It’s the same story every time.

I’m too old for amusement parks. I don’t find any thrill in being herded through long lines. The thought of flying is much less attractive than it was when I was a kid, watching George Reeves soar through clouds on a not-too-carefully-hidden ironing board.

I plan to hold bags, purses, and sandals while family and friends allow themselves to be strapped into uncomfortable plastic chairs and hurtle through the air at ridiculous speeds, flipping upside down and side to side while screaming uncontrollably.

Roller coasters are for the young, after all, for people whose bodies bounce back faster after defying the laws of gravity and the dictates of good sense.

In the weeks prior, I politely promise to ride, but intend to do nothing of the sort. To paraphrase Casey Kasem, I will keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

So how do I find myself harnessed into a seat, flat on my back, blinking back tears as I stare into the sun, the car in which I’m riding click click clicking toward the apex of a metallic hill, with only the whimpering of fellow guests and the distant cawing of gulls to keep me company?

And why do I find myself doing it again and again and again, vowing every time that this is absolutely, positively the last time?

Call it stupidity. Or a loathing of Casey Kasem.

I’m trying to keep my mind off the fact I’m claustrophobic, and that right now I’m restrained by shoulder harnesses the size of semi-truck tires and a plastic pommel pressing against some very private parts.

Disjointed thoughts flip through my mind.

I think of the acne-pocked teenagers below, checking my safety harnesses while making doe-eyes at each another, worrying more about lunch and a rendezvous behind the Big Dipper than my safety and comfort.

I think of news reports of riders who have been stranded for hours while technicians contemplate how to get them down. Or people with undiagnosed heart conditions whose final view is all the tiny, colored rectangles in the parking lot below, and who will be cut dangling from harnesses, eyes transformed into x’s like erased cartoon characters.

I think how odd it is that if any employer subjected me to even half this much torture, I would contact state representatives, human rights groups, and every attorney who ever advertised on the back cover of a phone book. But on my free time, I pay for the privilege.

I think how businesslike I am about having fun at an amusement park, how once I’ve climbed aboard one monstrous coaster, I won’t be happy until I’ve ridden them all, big alloy and wooden behemoths with names like Steel Cobra and X-Flight, rides they have to close down when somebody’s lunch makes an encore appearance on his lap.

The click click clicking stops, and there is one blissful moment when I am poised on the precipice, a moment that can be as long or as brief as I choose to make it.

Eyes still closed, I retreat to my happy place. I’m stretched out on a beach towel, a paperback book tented over my face, the waves lapping the shore in the distance. At any time, I know I can sit up and walk into the ocean, splash water on my feet, and maybe watch the annoying kid beside me be eaten by a shark.

It is a comforting place, far away from any screeching guests and testosterone-fueled expressions of manliness.

Then I open my eyes.

And I’m screaming and screaming and screaming, even as my face starts to bend and twist like those melting Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and I don’t want to die and Jane stop this crazy thing and I’m speaking in tongues and I don’t want to die and my ears are bouncing off the shoulder harnesses and I wonder how I could have ever thought the straps were too tight they’re loose too freaking loose and nobody treats me like this nobody and I don’t want to die.

The cars screech to a halt, and I dismount, smiling and shaking and walking on Jell-o legs.

And already deciding which coaster is next, because I have paid for this torture, and by God, I’m going to get my money’s worth. Even if it kills me.

 

Red Wave crashes into GOP

The much-ballyhooed Red Wave predicted for last week’s midterms ended as a low-tide tickling of the country’s collective ankles.

Following Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s projected win announced Saturday, Democrats will retain control of the Senate. They could solidify their hold if Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker next month in a Georgia runoff.

And control of the House could break Democrats’ way, as well, although this appears less likely given the trajectory of the vote counting thus far.

In any event, predictions of a red tide were, as Mark Twain once observed about erroneous reports of his own death, “grossly exaggerated.”

I’d like to think this is because voters were able to step away from concerns over the economy, compelling and important as they are, and focus on long-term issues, one of which is the preservation of democracy.

It is heartening that so many candidates who embraced false election narratives were defeated in their bids for election-oversight positions. These included aspirants for secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told Time magazine, “I hope it means we are closer to breaking the fever.”

However, a Washington Post survey noted that, as of Sunday morning, some 170 election deniers had either won or were projected to win various other posts. And surveys show that an alarming number of Republicans, 67%, still believe that Biden stole the election in 2020.

So, some voters still have a low-grade fever where baseless election fraud is concerned. Others may have thought the issue wasn’t as important when weighing different factors about candidates, including their positions on the economy, the environment or abortion.

Still other voters may have rationalized their choices by saying candidates didn’t really believe claims about election fraud but were saying what they did as a litmus test for a small but still statistically significant number of overall Americans who have bought into such false claims.

Overall, however, the trend toward the MAGA mindset appears to be dwindling as people get on with their lives and recognize the toxicity of the brand.

It seems to me that sensible Republicans, the ones who no longer want to descend into the vile snake pit that the former president amplified in 2016 and 2020, now have a choice.

They can support candidates and policies that are a reasonable reflection of their conservative views. Or they can follow the increasingly unpopular fringe groups that desperately want to drag the party into a never-ending spiral of white grievance and evidence-free conspiracy theories.

The party will be put to the test again this week, as Trump was widely expected to announce his bid for the 2024 presidency. (At press time, he has not.)

Will Republican leaders fall in line behind a man who could not, and has not, committed to one of the basic tenets of American democracy − the peaceful transfer of power? Or will this be the moment when they say enough’s enough?

As one Twitter commentator noted last week, the more extreme members of the Republican party, the ones who rightly should be named RINOs, have been looking for a civil war. Now they may have found one in their own party.

Indeed, the only Red Wave might be the one that splits the Republican party in half.

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

Originally published in The Alliance Review on Nov. 16, 2022.

Will schools' fights over phones fade away?

The fight against cell phones in schools often feels like the age-old dispute over jaywalking. For every student caught using a phone at an inappropriate time, dozens of other offenders may skate away unscathed.

Just like jaywalking, the cell phone battle can create accusations of selective enforcement, with all the unsavory overtones the term implies. Can so-called “good” kids get away with using phones more than “troublemakers”? What about students who use phones to complete assignments? Or to answer a text from a parent or guardian?

That last hypothetical really isn’t hypothetical. A recent Associated Press report notes that many disagreements over phone use in schools have less to do with battling students and more with battling parents. This is especially true as schools over the past two years have bucked the trend of loosening phone restrictions, likely because the devices are seen as distractions to addressing learning gaps caused by COVID.

But when students and staff must practice active-shooter drills periodically as a price for living in a society that values guns over people, it’s hard to blame a parent or guardian for wanting a constant connection to their children.

With added concerns over students’ mental health because of the COVID pandemic, it also makes sense that adults would want the reassurance of knowing their children are just a call or text away.

I teach at a high school that allows students to use their phones in the lunchroom and hallways (but not for traditional voice calls), yet requires them to put the devices away when they enter classrooms or restrooms.

It’s a great improvement over a previous policy that banned the devices completely. Enforcing the earlier restriction really did feel like catching one or two jaywalkers on a busy downtown street during lunch hour.

Most of my students obey the policy. Yes, it’s not always “clean.” Sometimes, students will not quite finish texting before they enter a classroom, prompting some redirection from the teacher. Occasionally, students will take surreptitious peeks at their phones during class, especially during March Madness or afternoon MLB games.

And sometimes students will ask if they can step out into the hallway “really fast” to let somebody at home know that a practice time has changed or to tell a boss that yes, they can come into work later that day.

To me, this all feels like part of an educator’s job: teaching responsible use of technology, normalizing asking for permission rather than begging for forgiveness, and helping students navigate a world where these devices are omnipresent.

I am also confident that policies about phone usage will become more permissive as districts recognize how walling off a resource with so much potential is counterintuitive. When teens today have more knowledge at their fingertips than the president of the United States did just 10 years ago, it makes little sense to prohibit their use.

Furthermore, busting kids for cell phones feels like selective enforcement when more and more of their peers wear smart watches, making those surreptitious checks of text messages almost impossible to catch.

“Everything in moderation” has seldom applied so perfectly as it does to cell phones, for adults and kids. Most districts don’t want students binge watching entire seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy” on their devices in school, but I can’t believe they begrudge those same students a message from home to see how their day is going.

And, yeah, I know we didn’t have pocket phones a generation ago and we grew up just fine. Just like our parents or grandparents didn’t have televisions, and their parents or grandparents didn’t have radios. Go back far enough and you’ll find somebody griping about kids and abacuses. It’s a specious argument.

Banning phones entirely doesn’t teach kids anything except blind obedience or, more likely, how to outwit an out-of-step restriction. Better to integrate the devices more fully into the school day, with consequences for offenders who misuse a revolutionary tool in education.

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

Originally published in The Alliance Review on Nov. 9, 2022. 

Nobody is laughing at fake news now

It’s easy to laugh at QAnon and “fake news.”

Easy to say it’s all just a bunch of random, conspiracy-laden theories, that the people who believe them are incels sequestered in their parents’ basements, far out of touch with reality. I’ve made such jokes myself.

But then we must square the guffawing with something like what happened to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband last Friday.

Paul Pelosi, 82, was allegedly attacked by a hammer-wielding 42-year-old QAnon adherent, David DePape, whose mind was a spaghetti dish of weird and outré beliefs. Among them, pizzagate, white genocide and Holocaust denial, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Without a doubt, DePape is a troubled man who needs psychiatric care. Yet while he is an aggressor in this instance, he is also in many ways a victim.

No, he’s not a victim of the Great Replacement or pizzagate or any of the other bizarre ideas he allegedly endorsed across multiple online platforms. Instead, he is a victim of the many individuals who popularize and amplify such theories, who target people like him to pump full of useless information, who then give the rhetorical equivalent of an eyeroll when asked to discredit them.

Both sides of the political spectrum are at fault for twisting and exaggerating news and cultural trends, but the ones who most often radicalize people like David DePape are those on the far-right.

You will find sanitized and slightly more socially acceptable versions of DePape’s beliefs across various right-leaning news networks, talk radio and online sites. You will even find politicians weaponizing these beliefs to drum up votes.

Take, for instance, any number of conservative office holders and candidates who will not say President Biden won the 2020 election. Or who will not commit to the peaceful transfer of power pending the results of next week’s election.

Or the ones like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who condemned the violence against Paul Pelosi, but couldn’t resist the urge to toss in, “but we’re gonna’ send [Nancy Pelosi] back to be with him in California” at the end of his statement, lest he be seen as soft on violence against his political enemies.

Last year, Mark Follman, writing in Mother Jones, noted that the term “stochastic terrorism” can be applied to leaders who use language to provoke action, yet maintain plausible deniability because they never specifically called for violence. Follman applied the term to Donald Trump, who often shrugs off responsibility for criminal actions done in his name. The former president is still at it today, refusing to acknowledge his loss in 2020, wearing a QAnon-related pin, and playing a QAnon anthem (or an anthem-adjacent song − there’s that plausible deniability again) at a rally earlier this year.

All this points, more than ever, to the value of teaching critical thinking skills in schools so that the next generation of Americans is less susceptible to manipulation. However, this is a task that could become more difficult as QAnon-tolerant or -supportive candidates seek to win elections to school boards and tie the hands of teachers and other curriculum experts.

In an essay called “The Art of Persuasion in a Polarized Age” in the Nov. 7/14 Time magazine, Anand Giridharadas notes that we should not blame disinformation victims. Instead, we should help them.

“When our friends and neighbors fall prey to these cons,” Giridharadas writes, “we in the evidence-based world often make the mistake of condemning them as harshly as those who conned them.” Instead, he says, we should try to dig deeper, to get at the root of the complicated feelings they are experiencing in an era of great social, political and demographic change.

Which sounds like a plan, except that there are a lot of potential David DePapes in the world, with far-right media sucking in more and more daily. To say nothing of those who would never dream of taking a hammer to the spouse of an elected official, but who would secretly applaud it, nonetheless. Call them stochastic-terrorism enablers, maybe.

At the bare minimum, perhaps all thinking people could agree not to vote for people who use theories like the ones that sucked in DePape for their own advantage.

Candidates who wink at such lunacy or use it to attract voters have no place in our government. Their ascendency only normalizes beliefs that people of all political persuasions should run from, not laugh at.

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

Originally published in The Alliance Review on Nov. 2, 2022

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

Good news for luddites seeking something people can do better than machines: Robots suck at folding clothes.

That’s the general consensus of experts over the years who have tried to build machines to do this most mundane of household tasks.

Of course, researchers didn’t say “suck.” In a National Public Radio report, they favored people over machines for clothes-folding because of “the complex configuration space as well as the highly non-linear dynamics of deformable objects.”

In other words, it’s hard to build a robot that can fit in the places where clothes need to be folded − both industrially and domestically − and a pile of clothes is a real mess to sort. In other, other words, robots suck at folding.

The latest attempt to straighten this wrinkly state of affairs will unfold (ahem) at a robotics conference in Japan later this month. There, German creators will make a case for their SpeedFolding system, a device with two bubbly, plastic arms that taper down to pinchers.

The inventors have already released a video on YouTube. It shows the SpeedFolding robot attempting two different methods of folding a shirt.

The first is the “fling to fold,” which looks like the way most people fold when they want to do a decent job. The robot picks up the rumpled shirt, shakes it like a Polaroid picture, and places it flat on the work surface. It then folds back each sleeve before performing a third fold at about mid-chest height. The results are pretty good, too. (I define “pretty good” as a folded shirt that would pass muster with my wife.)

The second is the “two-seconds fold,” which looks like the way most 5-year-olds fold shirts, by grabbing it at random and scrunching it together. The results are about what you would expect.

I feel sorry for the robot. The NPR article notes that it can fold only about 30 to 40 garments per hour with a 93% success rate. That’s far slower than all but the most inept of human clothes-folders.

This is no John Henry vs. a steam-powered machine to see who could crack more rocks. If you know that old song, Henry and his hammer win, but then he dies from the strain, with the implication being that modern technology may not be victorious yet, but will be eventually.

No, any sort of robot vs. person laundry battle is going to end with the human winning easily, then sauntering off to enjoy a pina colada on the veranda while the robot folder is still licking its pneumatic wounds.

Especially with an estimated price tag of $58,000.

I mean, maybe that would pay off in an industrial setting where there are thousands of items to be folded each day. Here at Casa Schillig, where there are but dozens of items each week, I can’t see the need, unless the robot could also be trained to clean out the gutters, mow the grass and wash the car.

Even then, $58,000 is a lot.

However, I humbly suggest that the SpeedFolding folks could score a big win if they would focus on just one aspect of the task − fitted sheets.

In my experience, there is no way to fold a fitted sheet that doesn’t involve copious amounts of swearing, pulling of the sheet in diverse directions at once, shaking (both the sheet and one’s fist at the gods), and eventual acknowledgment that it can’t be done.

Except that it can. Every fitted sheet came nicely folded when originally purchased, even if it never looks that way again.

If a robot could do that, maybe I could lay down my hammer and accept defeat.

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

The turkey — America's national bird?

Originally published in The Alliance Review in 2008. 

If Ben Franklin had succeeded in enshrining the turkey as our national bird, would we be eating eagle on Thanksgiving?

It’s one of life’s little imponderables. Either way, the turkey is a bird that needs some positive PR. Unlike beef and chicken, it has no fast-food representation. There is no McTom, no BK Gobbler, no Turkey McNuggets value meal.

Instead, the language is rife with negative turkey connotations. Everybody’s dated at least one turkey, and people who “gobble” up food are considered hogs (another animal that needs spin control). Hearing “tough turkey” means you’re not getting your way, and the loser of a fight is trussed up or stuffed like a turkey. Synonyms for turkey include failure, dud, bomb, washout and fiasco.

About the only positive reference comes in bowling, where three consecutive strikes earns the roller a “turkey,” but he’s still, you know, bowling, so how cool can it be, really?

To be fair, nobody likes being called a chicken or a cow, either, but at least both those animals are adequately represented on the dinner menu at home or in restaurants. Outside of a 6-inch turkey breast at sub shops or the rare turkey burger on health-food menus, old Tom is the least respected of the meats.

No, the turkey gets one blip on the public radar, November, when the White House issues a presidential pardon for one of his brethren, but 45,999,999 more go under the ax to serve as the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving meals. According to the Associated Press, shoppers won’t get a break on the bird at the grocery store, either: The average cost of a 16-pound bird is up $1.46 over last year.

The eagle, meanwhile, protected as he is by federal law, gets all the positive euphemisms – eagle eyes, Eagle Scout, legal eagle, and double eagle. A five-dollar gold piece issued from 1795 to 1916 and in 1929 is a half eagle, which even sounds weighty, and the bird is all over money and stationary, portrayed as strong, powerful – and inedible. Maybe we have a psychological need to mock in language the animals we eat.

Ben Franklin, however, had no love for the eagle. In a letter to his daughter, he wrote, “… I wish the eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

“With all this injustice, he is never in good case but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: The little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district.”

Later in the same letter, Franklin praises the turkey as “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”

Given many Americans belief in entitlement, or taking something for nothing, maybe the eagle as described by Franklin isn’t such a bad symbol after all.

Maybe the rest of us, who work everyday and hand over our eagle-imprinted money to those who don’t, are the real turkeys. It’s another imponderable to consider this Thanksgiving.