Texas Beat Down!

Two Posts in one day, you will probably not even read my earlier one!  OMG, that poor girl in Texas who got her ass beat with a belt handled by her Father AND her Mother!  This is Texas Justice? and implemented by a Judge no less!!!  I can't even imagine this sort of thing, never, ever, never under any conditions!  The Judge AND his wife should be shot for the mad dogs that they are!
   You can find this story on Google, it has pretty much gone viral and so it should.  The girl was 16 years old, had some kind of "developmental disability", not sure what but it makes no difference!  She had committed the crime of downloading some music on to her computer for which her Judge Father AND Mother beat the crap out of her with a belt!  That is just plain insanity!
   Maybe they are Muslims?  Where do people get the idea that beating other people, like maybe your own children, is a good idea?  Nuts!
   Nuts and contagious.  Studies has shown if someone was beaten as a child they are more likely to beat their own children.
   I would think that my kids would have had me committed if I had done that to them.  I would hope so.
This is how beating becomes "acceptable behavior" and how wife beaters and women who allow themselves to be beaten are created.
   I remember joking with my daughters, telling them that they were never good enough to be beaten!
Beating, a whipping like this by BOTH parents is all about control and power in a relationship.  Relationships that are power brokered, based on "might makes right" are stupid, ineffective and nuts!
   God, I would just curl up and die if I did something like that!  How can anyone be so very broken?
I couldn't do that to my dog.

Now, go read my earlier post!

Making Bread

     The easiest way to get someone to do something to ask for their help.  Not to assign them with tasks and responsibilities that they may not be familiar with but to get them to help you.  In this process you can transfer a skill and an attitude:  the job needs doing, the mess needs cleaned up, let's do it together!
    I taught my daughters to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen by encouraging them to make a mess. They have helped me make bread since they were two years old, standing on chairs so they could reach the counter.  The big bread bowl was way too heavy for their little hands and we learned to make bread the old fashioned way, without any bowls at all.  You make a circle of flour on the counter and place the other ingredients into this circle, the liquids too and you hope the flour makes a damn!  It is actually a lot of fun, making bread this way and it is a good way to make bread but it will make a mess.
    Making bread is probably one of my fondest memories, doing things with my daughters.  It is time consuming in a wonderful way.  It is product development and magical, it makes good smells and offers hours of conversation.  We learned to sweep the flour off the floor, my daughters with their little hand brooms and me with a bigger kitchen broom.  We learned that no one appreciates good bread or a nice meal if the kitchen is left in a mess.  We learned patience, waiting for the bread to rise.  And we always experimented, adding raisins or cheese or chocolate to this mix!  Some was pretty good and other batches were failures.  We learned that too.
     Somebody could probably write a book about what can be learned while making bread.  We learned to like each other.  We learned success and failure, to read and follow a recipe and to ignore it.  We learned that "eggs have to be broken to make omelets", it is okay to make a mess and appreciated when it is cleaned up.
     Often we would have that conversation, "what will you do when you grow up"?  I would always joke and say I didn't know yet!  But from the very beginning it was just expected that they would go on to college, at least get that four year experience and degree, and then they could make up their minds.  I am not sure that it was even a matter of choice, it was more like, yes the sun will come up tomorrow and yes, you will go on to the University.
What I do is HERE

Chickens in the Bedroom!

     I am going to Portland today, about 120 miles from where I live, to pick up "my baby daughter"!  She is coming from Washington D.C. where she has just finished the Bar Exams!  "Oh, what bar does she work at?" a friend joked to me.  She should be a real lawyer now, women have come a long way.
    I remember the day she was born, about 26 years ago, my second of two baby girls, the loves of my life.
"Wow, how do you get to be a lawyer?" I am asked. " "How lucky you are!"  And luck has a lot to do with it, I admit that, but I have philosophies of education and ideas on raising children and I like to think in some small way that I helped, if in nothing else, then at least in opening doors and stretching the horizon.
   I am six feet tall and weigh about 200 pounds.  I am a big man and being in construction all of my life, I am pretty strong.  My baby daughter was about 17 inches tall and weighed about nine pounds.  I knew from the beginning that I could beat her up, that I had the power of submission.  I could spank her and yell at her, fill her with disappointments and defeat.  I never did that.  My daughters have never been spanked. I knew from the start that that only proves that I am bigger than they are, that I have power and they don't.
   One of the first things you learn as a school teacher is that you are a lot bigger than the kids.  It is not comfortable being eleven years old sitting in a little tiny chair and having a huge teacher hovering over you where the student has to strain their neck and look way up to meet your eyes.  The teacher should kneel, get eye level with the student and then, this really helps: talk to the student as if they were real human beings!
    It is amazing how that works.  Eye level.  Honesty. Real Human Beings. And, unless danger is involved,
not from a position of power.  An equal trading of words.   I listened to my daughters.  And I am a touchy, feely kind of guy.  When I wasn't kneeling by their side I was picking them up, holding them close, and, yes, just squeezing them!  When they would have issues or problems or concerns I would help them understand and itemize alternatives, this road, that road and the pluses and minuses to both, and potential consequences.
Very seldom and maybe never did I make a decision for them.
     They grew up in a house of routines.  Dinner was pretty much always at the same time. After dinner, after their baths, Jane would always read to them, always.  I grew up in a house full of books and so have my children.  Hundreds of books, bookshelves everywhere.  There is not a room in the house without books.
Our house didn't even have a television until they were over tens years old!  They were limited to two hours a week!  Bedtime was always a ritual too and always the same.  Eight o'clock.  I think this was mostly so Jane and I could have some quiet time, but always the kids were in bed by eight o'clock.  They were allowed to read themselves to sleep, so there wasn't a curfew there.  They just had to be in their rooms and quiet, reading or sleeping.
    Their rooms were theirs.  Their kingdoms, their private places.  We never, ever, entered without knocking
and given permission to enter.
     There is a lot more to this story!  Tomorrow I will tell you about my daughters raising chickens in their bedrooms!
My Other Blog is Here!

Installation Art

Like most artists most of my work is done by myself, alone in solitude, contemplating and creating. But I am also an "installation artist" and do really big projects and these require assistance. Truthfully, I love these the most. I like the educational opportunities, the shared laughter, the awe, and the tiredness at the end of a completed job well done.
I interested my daughters at an early age in "doing things around the house". When my wife said that it meant cleaning and laundry but when I said it they knew we were going to build something! We did this enough that they gained a lot of confidence over the years and now they are not afraid to tackle anything. When they were eight and eleven years old they decided they wanted a pool in the back yard. I told them that if they did the digging I would help them build the pool.
They dug a hole 3 feet deep (one meter) by 15 feet long and nine feet wide, all by themselves!
My wife helped and the four of us built this little plunge pool, using left over bits of tile and slate
to finish it off. This created memories I will never forget and how proud I was when they invited their friends over to the pool they built! And another nice thing! my daughters are grown and gone now but I still have the pool!