Ieyeayeai

    You probably noticed this. If you didn't, you should have. Last week the stick was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. I have a feeling I am not the only reader of this extraordinary news to grin at the announcement. Not only did the news bring back fond memories of my own play with sticks (some of them not very old memories), I suddenly felt unusually optimistic about humanity, knowing that we have created a museum dedicated to enshrining and encouraging the serious art of play.
    If you haven't checked out the website for this amazing museum, you should. You may not be surprised to discover exactly what 41 toys have already been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame...depending on where you were raised you surely have played with a few. In some cases, you've probably played with most or all of them. Besides the stick, one of my other favorites is the cardboard box. Imagine the quality of thought invested in determining that the stick and the cardboard box are worthy of toy fame!
    It's fascinating to read the write-ups of the various toys that occupy places of honor. Here's what the museum has to say about the stick [Please note, this material is copyrighted by the Strong National Museum of Play. I have copied it here because I couldn't figure out a way to link directly to it.]

The stick may be the world's oldest toy. Animals play with sticks, and we use them to play fetch with our dogs. Children find sticks an endless source of make-believe fun. Sticks can turn into swords, magic wands, majorette batons, fishing poles, and light sabers. When children pretend with sticks, they cultivate their creativity and develop their imagination. They explore as they search outdoors for just the right one. Children build with sticks, bat balls with them, and walk with them. They are the original building blocks for creative play. Sticks also promote free play—the freedom to invent and discover. They encourage playing outside instead of inside. Sticks are all around us; they are natural and free. And playing with sticks isn't just for children and animals Adult artists, crafters, decorators, and architects all make use of sticks in sculptures, wreaths, furniture, and building design. Few adults or children can resist simple play with sticks—from drawing in the sand on the beach, to building a campfire and then toasting marshmallows. Sticks are not only possibly the oldest toy, they're possibly the best!

    Browsing the video of inducted toys, I couldn't help but remember Toys of Great Meaning to me, both as a child and an adult. I was delighted to discover that the museum encourages nomination of toys and includes a nomination form at the site which delineates the four criteria by which toys are judged in order to deem them iconic. The most important is criterion #4, entitled Innovation. Here are some of the toys with which I've spent long hours playing (listed in no particular order) that haven't yet found a place in the National Toy Hall of Fame [For a straight, written list of already inducted toys, click here]:

• Rocks: Great for building structures, my favorite of which were fireplaces, around which I pretended I was a Nature Dweller, and dams in streams of rain run-off; practicing throwing; using as markers for hopscotch; skipping across bodies of water; substituting for jacks; and, just wondering over particularly strange and noteworthy stones.
• Blankets: Can be fashioned into imaginary wardrobes for fantasy characters; make serviceable tents, both indoors and out.
• Chemistry Sets: Oh, my, what fun I had with my first and second chemistry sets! I not only experimented with the chemicals, I learned how to reshape glass with heat (accidentally, I admit, but it was a happy accident).
• Models: At various times I was fascinated with constructing and painting models of birds and horses. One of my sisters loved putting together models of monsters. And, of course, many, many kids, and adults, construct models of conveyances of all types, rooms and buildings.
• Which brings to mind Popsicle Sticks, Burnt Wooden Matches and Toothpicks: All very handy for constructing a variety of models.
• Deck of Cards: The card games, themselves, aren't the only fun provided by this simple toy. They can also be used for model building and astonishing one's friends, and oneself, with magic tricks. And, of course, there is the ever exasperating game of 52 Pick-up. Who hasn't had a sibling tempt one into playing a round of this nasty trick of a game? It's probably one of the foremost landmarks in The Death of Innocence.
• Which reminds me of Pick-Up Sticks: Curious as this toy is, I loved the challenge of trying to remove sticks without disturbing others and spent many engrossed hours doing this.
• Blowing Bubbles Solution: How could this toy not have made the list???? In our family, it was a special toy allowed on only certain occasions because my mother (who probably wasn't alone in this concern) didn't particularly like the soapy mess that coagulated on furniture, walls and floors when the bubbles popped.
• Chess: I'm surprised this one hasn't yet made the list. I'm can't imagine that it hasn't been suggested. Perhaps it's considered too serious, too much work. However, playing chess isn't the only activity these sets provoke. I never learned to play chess, never wanted to, and yet I spent many concentrated hours setting up chess pieces on the chess board and working out dramas among the pieces. Checkers doesn't lend itself, really to this type of play, because, except for two colors, the pieces, themselves, are all the same.
• Parcheesi: How could this game not have made it into the Toy Hall of Fame? Is it possible that, in the Museum's 10 year history no one has suggested it? Not only is it iconic on its own, and very old, besides, the game Sorry is based on it. It was one of my family's favorite games.
• Trivial Pursuit: This is, of course, a late comer to the game genre, but it certainly changed the face of gaming and it has millions of devotees.
• The Ball: That's right, the simple, sturdy ball. It has so many incarnations that it's probably prehistoric and mostly likely morphed out of a round rock. As a species, we spend an extraordinary amount of time playing (and working, if one is a professional athlete) at moving a ball from one place to another. It also has a place in the old game of Dodge Ball as a play-weapon (I've heard that this game has been banned from some playgrounds, which I understand, but, when I was in elementary school, I was a Dodge Ball champion).
• Monkey Bars: Need I say more?
• And, how about Swings: Any sort. Tires strung on ropes, ropes extended from trees over ground or water, hammocks, the metal and canvas or board constructs at parks and playgrounds.
• Slides: What's more fun than sliding down a slide? I'll tell you what: Climbing up the slippery part of the slide.
• Trees: Oh my, climbing trees, swinging from trees, hiding in trees, staking out Contemplation Territory in trees, building forts and tree houses, trees are essential toys in areas where they are a part of the environment.
• Paper Dolls: My favorite paper doll activity was to design and make my own clothes for my paper dolls. At one time I set about making international Girl Scout costumes for one of my paper dolls. I can't remember if I managed to make all the costumes, but I think I very nearly got them all.

    I could go on, but I won't; I'll leave that to you. I'll bet you can think of a unique list of your own favorites that is at least as long as mine. Consider nominating some of your favorite toys for induction into Strong's National Museum of Play Toy Hall of Fame. That's what I plan to do. In the meantime, I think I'll just sit here and revel, for a bit, in the activity of thinking about play, how I've played, how I continue to play and how play is so fundamental to us as a species (and other species, as well) that it may very well be fundamental to life. Not a few psychologists who study creativity believe, for instance, that the phenomenon of advanced involvement to which they often refer as "flow" is indistinguishable from play. I wonder, too, for instance, if insects play and, if they do, how they play. Considering that I appropriate life (a kind of life, anyway) to units of existence that are normally considered lifeless, such as rocks, I wonder if they play, in some eccentric dimension to which we soft, fast creatures are not privy. If it weren't for play I never would have taught myself to write, to read, to type, to work computers, to fool around with blogging...in fact, it could be said that I'm playing, right now.

Labels: eye, play

    The American Community Survey arrived at our household yesterday. I love facts and statistics, isolated and in combination, well used or misused, and I love being a fact and/or statistic, so this is right up my alley.
    I didn't expect answering the questions to pose a problem, but it did. It seems, if you are employed full time as a caregiver in your home without economic compensation (that's recognized as such) the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't take you into much consideration: You are simply a name at an address.
    Why is it important for you to be represented, as an unpaid caregiver in the home, for the purposes of the American Census? The Census, folks, is where congress gets much of the information it uses when it decides how to apportion the budget. As well, when a category is casually recognized enough to finally have the Census Bureau take note of it in a survey, civil legal equality is on it's way for that category. Think of the question of ancestory. Once we began noticing that people share experiences based on shared ancestory and some of those experiences are unjust and need to be addressed by civil law, a variety of ancestoral background choices became available in the Census survey and these groups and their experiences could no longer be ignored in their plea for legal acknowledgement.
    When I read through the census questions I realized that who I really am and what I am really doing, paid or not, is becoming so ubiquitous that it needs to be acknowledged and considered by society. This will only happen if those of us who belong to a particular ignored category begin skewing (not as in lying; as in accurately representing) our answers in order to set up a pattern of responses that points to us as a unique and attention worthy demographic. Fulltime caregivers are not the only people who make up this category. Unpaid, stay at home parents; relatives and friends who are gladly beleaguered with the care of an infirm loved one, whether the cause of the infirmity be chronic or terminal.
    The more I thought about it, the more I realized the importance for all unpaid caregivers, part or full time, to pay attention to what each is saying about her or himself and the care recipient to which he or she is assigned. Part time representation of caregiving would have been a problem on the particular survey my mother and I received. It asked only whether "this person" did any work within the last week "for pay or profit" but included an addendum: "Mark (X) the Yes box even if the person worked only one hour, or helped without pay in a family business or farm for 15 hours or more..." Ah, I realized. I run the family business; thus, I'll mark this question (Section H, Question 23) and the following ones as though I'm an unpaid worker in the family business, which I am.
Here's How I Skewed the Answers for the family business which I run and through which I am employed:

• Section H/Question 24:
  Answered all these subquestions by filling in the address of my home, since I work in my home.
• Section H/Question 25:
  X'ed "Work in Home" and skipped to
• Section J/Question 33:
  52 weeks
• Section J/Question 34:
  100+ hours
• Section K/Question 35:
  X'd "working WITHOUT PAY in a family business or farm"
• Section K/Question 36:
  My mother as her caregiver
• Section K/Question 37:
  Caregiving
• Section K/Question 38:
  X'ed "other"
• Section K/Question 39:
  Caregiving
• Section K/Question 40:
  Caregiving
• Section K/Question 41 & Question 42:
  No income

    My mother, who was Person 1, had answers for questions that made it clear that she was retired, the income earner in the household as well as the care recipient, and disabled both physically and mentally so that someone else runs, and sometimes lives, her life.
    The reason I am publishing my answers to certain questions is to make it clear how these questions can be answered to invent a demographic pattern, that of unpaid home caregiver who essentially runs an informal business by running a care recipient's life. If any unpaid caregivers find this questionnaire crossing their mail slot, give some care to answering the questions accurately enough so that your statistics bring attention to the category, and the plight, of the unpaid caregiver in the home.

Labels: census, I

April 25, 2005

Democratic National Committee

Dear Fellow Gentlepeople,

    Today I received two solicitations for money from two organizations claiming to work within the political process to change the direction in which our country is heading: One from you and one from the ACLU. Your solicitation included a shamelessly general questionnaire which reflected almost none of my political positions. The ACLU's solicitation included three copies of a petition, each addressed to one my federal senators and representative, urging them to oppose "efforts to make every provision of the Patriot Act permanent" and "other affronts to freedom", some of which were specified. I have answered your questionnaire, which is enclosed. I want to explain to you why the ACLU got my donation.
    Take a look at my responses. In most cases I added my own response to each question. For question #1 I devised my own rating method. My feeling, as you will no doubt determine from my answers, is that you misworded the questions and provided a series of inadequate answers from which to choose, thus indicating that you have the wrong focus on most of the issues mentioned to satisfy me.
    As well, you need to note that I am not a registered Democrat, I am a registered Independent. Although I voted for the Kerry/Edwards ticket last year, now that I see how well that worked I have decided that if I am as frustrated in 2008 by the political discussion surrounding the Presidential candidates as I was in 2004 I will write in and vote for myself.
    It would do the Democratic Party good to review my response to your questionnaire and take it as a lesson in the perspicacity of the average U.S. voter. You need to remember that the Presidential election of 2004 raised the political awareness of U.S. citizens exponentially. I am one of those citizen voters.
    You should know, too, that within the next few days I will be publishing your questionnaire with my answers, a copy of the ACLU petition and a copy of this letter on my website, Ieyeayeai, in my own effort to nourish the heightened level of political awareness in the U.S. If you have a copyright problem with this please let me know and I'll remove your contribution to my post with, of course, an explanation as to why it has been removed. You might want to note, as well, the post on the above mentioned website which is a copy of an email I sent to President Bush on the day of his inauguration. It perfectly expresses my current political stance. If you heed my stance and begin to address the reality and complexity of the issues mentioned (and some not mentioned) in your questionnaire, perhaps the next time I receive a solicitation from you and a competing political organization, you will receive my donation; and my vote.

Sincerely,
Gail Rae Hudson

2005 Grassroots Survey of Democratic Leaders
All material except that in white and "x"'s indicating my choice of responses copyright by the Democratic National Committee

To the reader: The responses I devised and added appear in this color and font.

Purpose of this Survey
The Democratic National Committee is conducting this survey to help gauge the opinions of local Party leaders on the critical issues facing our nation. Your survey responses will give the DNC a better understanding of the views of Democrats in [your] area. With your input, the DNC will be more effective in building grassroots support for our Party's agenda.

Survey Instructions
Please answer all questions to the best of your ability using blue or black ink. To ensure statistical accuracy, please do not skip any questions. Your survey responses will be kept confidential. Please return this entire form in the pre-addressed envelope provided. Thank you for your participation in the 2005 Grassroots Survey of Democratic Leaders.

1.  Which of the following issues is the most important to you? Please rank from 1-10 with "1" being the most important to you.

1   Improving public education   1   Protecting the environment  10  National Security/Foreign Policy   1   Economic/tax policy   1   Reproductive freedom

1   Social Security reform   1   Civil rights and liberties   1   Health care affordability   1   National energy policy   1   Other  Foreign Policy

2.  Which of the following statements most closely match your view when it comes to extending the life of Social Security? None of these closely match my view on Social Security.
      Privatize the program to allow workers to invest some of their Social Security payroll contributions in the stock market.
      Cut benefits or raise the retirement age to extend the life of Social Security.
      Use means testing to reduce benefits for wealthy or high income retirees.
      No changes in Social Security are necessary.
  x  Look at the way Social Security funds are being managed and invested.

3.  Do you support new tax cuts targeted at working families?
      Yes, with our economy struggling, working families need a tax break.
      No, additional tax cuts at this time will only worsen the federal deficit.
  x  Let's look at the way government is spending money, not money collection.

4.  Should the government put a high priority on stopping American manufacturing jobs from being "outsourced" to overseas workers?
      Yes, the manufacturing jobs being lost are essential to our economy.
      No, American consumers benefit from cheaper goods made overseas.
  x  America needs to figure out how to adjust to the changing world economy.

5.  Do you support raising the minimum wage from its current level of $5.15 per hour?
      Yes, the minimum wage should be increased to help workers make ends meet.
      No, raising the minimum wage will hurt small businesses and cost jobs.
  x  See question #4.

6.  Do you believe Medicare should be allowed to re-import less expensive drugs from Canada to make prescription medicines more affordable for senior citizens?
      Yes, this will help millions of seniors who struggle to pay for their prescriptions.
      No, it is too risky as the safety of these drugs can't be guaranteed.
  x  U.S. needs to figure out how to rein in pharmaceutical companies.

7.  In your view, what is the best way to ensure health care coverage for all Americans?
      Tax credits to help employers provide health care coverage for their employees.
      Medical savings accounts that let families set aside money for health care costs.
  x  A government-run system where everyone is guaranteed health care coverage.

8.  Thinking about the issue of education, which of the following is your number one priority? Please select only one answer.
      Funding for early education programs like Head Start.
      Funding for elementary and middle school education to reduce class size.
      Funding for tuition aid programs to make college more affordable.
  x  Retooling our education program so our people once again receive a world class education.

9.  Do you support the use of vouchers that would provide parents with government money to pay for private school tuition?
  x  Yes, parents deserve more options in choosing schools for their children for the time being.
      No, vouchers would destroy the public school system.

10.  How would you characterize our gun laws in America?
      We need stronger laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children, and to keep military-style assault weapons off our streets.
      Our gun laws are about right. We need no new gun control legislation.
      Our gun laws interfere with an individual's right to bear arms.
  x  We need to change our grassroots attitude toward the need for self-defense and the use of violence to solve problems.

11.  What is your opinion about a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion?
  x  I support a woman's right to choose.
      I support a woman's right to choose, but believe we need some restrictions such as parental notification laws and mandatory waiting periods before having an abortion.
      I oppose a woman's right to choose.

12.  When decisions about Social Security's future are being made what do you think is most important?
      Keeping Social Security as a program with a guaranteed monthly benefit.
      Allowing younger workers to decide for themselves how their Social Security contributions are invested.
      Both guaranteed benefits and investments are important.
  x  Let's look at how S.S. manages its money before distributing it.

13.  Do you support increased defense spending to fight the war against terrorism?
      Yes, we need a stronger military to stop terrorist threats around the globe.
      No, the money should be spent on domestic needs like education and health care.
  x  I think "the war on terrorism" is the wrong foreign policy focus.

14.  What is your opinion about our environmental laws in America?
  x  We need stronger environmental laws to protect our air and water, clean up toxic waste, safeguard endangered wildlife and habitat and combat global warming.
      Our environmental policies are about right, no new laws are needed.
      Our environmental laws burden businesses and hurt our economy.

15.  To help make progress on issues like those discussed in this survey, will you join the Democratic National Committee as a contributing member today?
      Yes, go on to next question.
      No, I am an Independent and will donate money to whatever organization, political or social, appears to be addressing my political concerns.


ACLU "I Refuse to Surrender My Freedom" Petition
All material copyright by the ACLU

Dear [Senator/Representative]:

As Republicans and Democrats alike have acknowledged, the USA Patriot Act went too far, too fast in limiting our freedoms. Now President Bush wants to make every provision of the Patriot Act permanent.

President Bush wants us to surrender our freedom and tolerate more government searches of our homes and possessions without probable cause of crime.

President Bush wants us to surrender our freedom from FBI investigations provoked by nothing more than an exercise of our freedom of speech.

President Bush wants us to surrender our freedom from government agents secretly searching the books we read, the credit card purchases we make and the Internet sites we visit.

I urge you to take the lead in opposing efforts to make the freedom-stealing provisions of the Patriot Act permanent. And I urge you to oppose other affronts to freedom as well. Don’t let them write discrimination into the Constitution . . . undermine our basic right to privacy . . . oppose reproductive freedom . . .destroy the separation of church and state . . . and selectively apply the right to due process.

I refuse to surrender my freedom — and I am trusting YOU as my representative to refuse to support legislative initiatives that are on the wrong side of the law . . . the wrong side of core American values . . . and the wrong side of history.

Sincerely,
[Petitioner]


    After the DNC left their above mentioned donation in my mailbox and I decided to post my reactions, out of curiosity I searched the internet looking for other mentions of the 2005 Grassroots Survey of Democratic Leaders. One surfaced, a post on the website 128 Hours dated April 20, 2005; timed at 5:28 p.m. If you find my post interesting, you might want to check it out. It's a different take than mine: The Wonk makes some cogent points using on-the-mark, tongue-in-cheek cynicism.

Labels: eye, politics

    Terror is a reaction, not an action.

Labels: aye, terror

Reference:
brainhell
Post Date:   Friday, January 21, 2005 - 7:10 a.m.
Post Name:  Effect vs. Affect, round two

    In the evolution of language, common use trumps standard use every time. Common usage is why, for instance, we no longer speak the old English in which Beowulf was written; common usage is why a junior high student finds her first dalliance with Shakespeare confounding. Thus, what's important about language is not what a dictionary says about the use of a particular word or set of words. Dictionaries contain a degree of obsolescence the moment they are published, which is why they are republished at regular intervals. The importance lies in how words are used and understood as people swap them about.
    In the art of language (aside from the evolution of language) the most important skill is the ability to play: Allowing nouns, verbs and adjectives to mix themselves into verbals, adjectivals and nominals; paying close attention to onomatopoeia; luring conjunctions and articles out of hiding; a willingness to consider the semantic extension of turning any word into an exclamation; remembering that accepted English grammar was stolen from Latin, which had little to do with English usage and, as time goes by, has less and less to do with it; in general, rolling up one's oral and intellectual sleeves and getting one's tongue and mind dirty with language.
    Thus, when an argument arises about "correct usage", the "exceptional" language player knows that the importance of the argument doesn't lie in which side is "right", nor, even, which side "makes sense" from a standard usage perspective, but what side reflects and furthers the inevitable evolution of language. As well, in the example of weather and tomatoes, it does, indeed, make sense to a gardener, for instance, that weather cultivates and even frequents the availability of tomatoes, depending on which semantic sense of "cultivate" and "frequent" one decides to understand.
    Take it from the French intellectuals who decided, some years ago, to officially close French in an effort to keep it pure: Such an endeavor is always frustrating and inevitably doomed.

Labels: eye, language

Subject:  On the Occasion of Your Second Inauguration
From:  Gail Hudson ieyeayeai@cableone.net
Date:  January 19, 2005 - 2134
To:  President George W. Bush president@whitehouse.gov

    Please do not assume that you and your administration have the mandate of the American People. I am a United States citizen, a registered Independent voter, an American Person and you do not have my mandate. According to the election results, I am in good company; almost half the electorate of the United States of America has not extended their mandate to you.
    It is important, I think, that you understand that this election has aroused the political interest, awareness and energy of a huge segment of not only the U.S. electorate but the general population. We have retrained our political eyes on our country, its policies, its elected officials and, most importantly, its pulse. None of us, whether we supported you or another candidate, is apt, in the wake of this presidential election, to drop our vigilance nor our reclaimed ability to enter into the arena of political decision making.
    Many of us do not believe that this country needs to be healed of the divisiveness of this recent election but rather needs to be healed of our arrogant global insularity and our inability to serve the productivity, health and well-being of our beleaguered citizenry. Our interest in morality is not focused on the non-issues of gay marriage and whether the Abrahamic God is mentioned in political documents. Rather, we ponder:

1. The questionable morality of our involvement in Iraq;
2. The dimensions of modern day political terror (considering that political terror is older than civilization) and what is so distinguished about it that we suddenly need to launch a terrible (forgive the pun but it's appropriate) war against what appears to be an inevitable human practice;
3. The ethical divergence between the Patriot Act and both traditional and documented definitions of freedom in our country;
4. The moral advisability of continuing to allow Big Business to run rampant over the economic vulnerability (which has increased in the last four years) of both U.S. and global citizens;
5. The difficulty of politically determining morally based legal doctrine on the personal issue of a woman's right to choose to abort an unborn human and the use of fetal tissue in stem cell research.

    All these issues, and many more, demand profound, disciplined, inclusive flexibility of reasoning. We who have been energized through the process of last year's presidential election, on the day of your second inauguration as President of the United States, will pledge our intellectual resources to the thoughtful dignity these and other issues deserve and have yet to receive in the political arena.
    Those of us whose mandate you have not been granted may have lost, in this election, the seat of the President of the United States but we did not lose our determination nor our sense that we count and can make a difference, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
    Remember, President Bush, over these next four years, as you continue to spearhead our strategy in Iraq, choose judges for the highest court in our country and create policy that affects the lives of our bedrock citizenry, just because you cannot run for the office of President of the United States again does not mean that, for the next four years, you are allowed to do anything you please politically. The inner eagles of the many of us whose mandate you were not handed have taken flight.

Respectfully, with very high hopes for our country's next four years,
Gail Hudson
One of the Bedrocks

Labels: I, politics

    Not often, but once in awhile, I wish that my mind wasn't as finely tuned as it is. If it weren't I wouldn't know that I wasn't privy to ecstatic truths so I wouldn't miss them and I wouldn't suffer the bludgeoning of discouraging truths.
    Tonight is one of those once in awhiles.

Labels: ai, truth