A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

The Democratic Primary

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It’s no secret that there is no way Trump would ever get my vote. He’s emotionally fragile, intellectually bankrupt, and utterly corrupt. He believes that the office of the Presidency is there to serve him rather than the other way around. His trading on public resources to induce foreign powers to meddle in our elections was exactly the kind of thing the Founders were concerned about when they wrote the Constitution. Federalist 68: “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?”

Also, for good or bad, we have a two party system. If Trump is the Republican nominee, that means the choice is either him or the Democratic nominee. So, if an inanimate carbon rod gets the Democratic nomination, that’s who is getting my vote. Right now, Joe Biden is the Democratic front runner. And he may well come out on top. But I was listening to the latest episode of Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History.” He’s on part 3 of his series on the rise of Japan in the late 19th century and its subsequent actions in World War II. He describes a scene in December 1941 as the Japanese are taking down a battleship with aircraft. It’s becoming apparent that there’s a new development in warfare. Powerful, expensive ships can be taken down by low cost, easily replaced aircraft. But that’s a bit of an aside. As relevant to the primary, Dan compared the scene to a pack of predators taking down a larger animal bit by bit. As the larger animal takes more damage, it becomes less maneuverable and the pack goes in for the kill. It made me think of the Biden campaign as compared to the pack of other Democratic contenders. Maybe that’s not how it will go — I’m terrible at these sorts of predictions — but that’s the analogy that came to mind.

For my part, I don’t mind Biden, but I like Mayor Pete and Elizabeth Warren. I don’t have strong feelings about Bernie himself, but his online supporters have been fairly off-putting in a way that doesn’t seem nearly so common for supporters of other candidates. In a perfect world, I should be comparing policies, but Presidential campaigns are won or lost on the basis of personalities. The electorate says they care about policy, but when it comes time to vote, they mostly don’t understand the policies and have shaped their understanding of the policies to conform with their personality preferences. I may have better than average understanding of some of these issues, but ultimately, I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of federal laws, rules, and regulations to truly assess the candidates’ plans beyond a pretty superficial level. Nevermind the fact that whatever they propose will have to navigate the legislative process. I’m going to have to trust that the person will do the best they can and will generally make sound decisions.

To me, Buttigieg and Warren have the deepest understanding of the issues. So far as I can tell, they both have the best interests of the country in mind. Last night, Pete gave a speech in Iowa that was very impressive. He’s still a long shot, but it made me think that this election might not be unwinnable for him.

There are thousands of people offering their takes on the Democratic primary, so I’m not sure I’m adding a lot of value to anyone’s day with this. But, writing helps me evaluate my own thinking on the subject, and I don’t feel like I’ve been doing enough writing lately. So, here you go.

The Peculiar Hoosier Opposition to the Congressional Armenian Genocide Resolution

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Those of you who have been around the Internet long enough may have some familiarity with Usenet which was a collection of newsgroups that pre-dated the World Wide Web. I first started reading some newsgroups in 1994. Something strange I noticed was a persistent and vocal posting about the Armenian Genocide. This was apparently one of the first instances of spam bots posting. It was probably counter-productive inasmuch as the spam tried to minimize or deny that the genocide had happened. I hadn’t been aware of the history at all, so what the spam did was make me curious and caused me to become aware that, during the Armenian Genocide, the Ottoman Turks systematically expelled and exterminated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians. Per Wikipedia:

The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases—the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.

On the recommendation of the Better-Late-Than-Never committee, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted Resolution 296 recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide. The resolution recounts some history and then resolves:

That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the policy of the United States to—

(1) commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance;

(2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States Government with denial of the Armenian Genocide or any other genocide; and

(3) encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, including the United States role in the humanitarian relief effort, and the relevance of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day crimes against humanity.

There is nothing particularly controversial here. It passed the House 405-11. In these polarized times, it’s amazing to get that level of bipartisan support for anything. Sometimes it feels like apple pie would have trouble getting more than a 60% vote and mom might have trouble mustering a majority. But, here is the strange thing: of that 11, four of them were from Indiana. Representatives Baird, Brooks, Buschon, and Pence voted against. Fully one-third of the “nay” votes came from Indiana. Put another way, a resolution that passed with 97% nation-wide support garnered only 56% support in Indiana.

Why the particular opposition to genocide recognition among the Indiana delegation? This is not a particularly partisan thing. Republicans and Democrats alike overwhelmingly voted in favor of the resolution. This is an Indiana thing. (Representatives Baird and Pence were also on the wrong side of a 403 – 16 vote on H.R. 4695,  “sanctions and various restrictions related to Turkey’s military invasion of northern Syria.”)

Update: Adam Wren is on the case: He reports sources telling him that Indy Eleven (soccer team) and Keystone Construction (lots of public construction projects) owner, Ersal Ozdemir, who is from Turkey lobbied the Indiana delegation hard to vote “no” on the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. When asked, Rep. Susan Brooks didn’t deny speaking with Ozdemir and Rep. Greg “Do You Know Who My Brother Is?” Pence, also doesn’t deny speaking with Ozdemir and asserts that this vote against recognizing the genocide is somehow reflective of his confidence in Trump’s Middle East strategy.

Indiana’s “Mississippi Strategy” for Education Will Bear Bitter Fruit

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Michael Hicks, writing for the Muncie Star Press has a thoughtful opinion piece on the education strategy Indiana has been pursuing that is well worth a read. (Although, I have to take a second to grouse about the Star Press site – the content loads slowly and the page jumps all around as the ads load in a scatter shot fashion. These Gannett sites are all but unreadable on my laptop.) Generally speaking, Hicks complaint is that our educational policies have not been sending our children on to education after high school:

Since the third quarter of 2007, when the economy was booming, Indiana’s workforce down-skilled profoundly. We’ve seen 31 percent growth in workers with less than a high school diploma, nearly no change among those with high school diploma and under 5.0 percent growth among those who have been to college or have an Associate’s degree. The simple fact is from third quarter 2007 to third quarter 2018, a whopping 55 percent of new workers had less than a high school diploma.

He attributes this to a shift in education policy that he calls “the Mississippi Strategy” which might please a certain segment of political donors (he does not say, but I’m thinking the likes of Hilbert and DeVos) but does our state and our children a disservice. Under the Mississippi Strategy, the educational system focuses on supplying the economy with workers rather than supplying the state with citizens. Such an approach, he argues, is misguided, empirically unsupportable, and authoritarian.

Obviously this opinion piece caters to some of my deeply held biases. I named this blog “A Citizen’s Guide to Indiana” for a reason. (Although I recently read someone quip that when a person of color hears a white person use the word “citizen” it never means anything good.) I don’t use the term “citizen” to necessarily mean that we need to educate our kids to be deeply involved in politics — though they should have an understanding of the functions of our institutions and an awareness of what’s happening. Rather, we should aspire to teach our children what it means to be human and how to function happily and meaningfully in a society. I know this gets dangerously close to sounding like a bunch of liberal arts gobbledy-gook, but it’s important. Teaching our kids nothing more than how to be good workers for a job that exists right now is like building a one-legged stool with that one leg being too short. We need to teach our kids how to adapt to the economy as it changes or, even better, how to change the economy themselves. And, we need to teach kids how to make positive contributions to themselves, to their families, and to their communities when they aren’t working.

This isn’t all on the schools, of course, but as Mr. Hicks points out, if our education policy focuses narrowly on short-sighted employment goals, we will regress. Never forget, Indiana was once a powerhouse. Over a period of 50 years or so, we supplied six vice-presidential candidates (4 successful) and one President. We became an industrial force as cities like Muncie, Marion, Kokomo, and Anderson grew – creating over 100 factories and thousands of jobs in the late 19th century. It is no coincidence that, during this political and economic boom, our Golden Age of literature flowered with authors like Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, and Booth Tarkington. There were other factors, but I don’t think it’s an accident that Indiana became a juggernaut a generation after Caleb Mills finally persuaded the General Assembly to make a state wide education system a reality rather than merely an aspiration.

Maybe I’ll try to expound upon this later, but I think there is a fundamental difference between policymakers with respect to whether they see people as liabilities or assets. When we see people as liabilities, then the goal of government is to spend as few resources on them as possible, getting them from cradle to grave with as little fuss as possible. When we see people as assets, then the goal of government is to maximize their potential as efficiently as possible, knowing that the return on that investment will exceed the expenditure as the children become productive, well-rounded citizens contributing to the community. The Mississippi Strategy takes the former approach.

School Grading Philosophy

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I was reading a book on school grading metrics, as one does on a Sunday. The book is “On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting” by Thomas Guskey. Warning to the reader: I read the book pretty quickly and this is some stream of consciousness on my part. So any mistakes are likely on my end and not on the author’s.

One issue is that the use of a single grade is often an amalgamation of potentially confounding variables that, ultimately, makes it difficult to tell what a grade represents. One example he gives is two “C” students. One is diligent, grinds away, participates in class, turns everything in on time but ultimately what the student produces is unremarkable. The other is not terribly diligent, turns work in late, has attendance problems, but what he does produce is excellent, demonstrating good understanding of the material and penetrating insights.  These are very different students but the grade is the same. Some systems — I think Canada was referenced — deal with this by giving separate marks for product, process, and progress. In the example I gave, the first student would have a good process grade but a mediocre or poor product grade. The second student would be the reverse. Progress would tell you more about the impact the class had had on the student’s knowledge.

Another issue is a sort of illusory precision we give our grades that can have some pernicious effects. Categorizing student achievement in five broad categories has its challenges, but is doable. Something along the lines of excellent (A), decent (B), acceptable (C), poor (D), and unacceptable (F). The difference between 83% and 86% is going to be arbitrary, dependent on a bunch of variables and teacher idiosyncracies. There is really no foundation showing that these metrics are telling us what we want to know. The author points out that by making the scale 100 points and setting the “D”/”F” line at 60%, you’ve now created 60 points of failure on the scale with only 40 points of passing work. You’re using up a lot of real estate on the failing end of the scale that’s not really helping anyone. Combine that with the confounding process variable I mentioned above, and you potentially end up with something like a late assignment being given a 0 — more than half a grading scale away from a passing grade; you know nothing from this about the student’s substantive knowledge of the subject matter; and the student is in an academic hole that is a great deal deeper than it would be without this illusion of precision.

And maybe the biggest issue is that we have grades working at cross-purposes. What are we trying to do with these things? Is the purpose of our educational system to develop academic proficiency or to identify and select the best and the brightest? If you’re trying to develop academic proficiency, you will ideally develop a system that gets all of your students to the desired levels of proficiency. If that’s the case, you’ll end up with a bunch of kids at the highest end of the spectrum. On the other hand, if you’re looking to rank, filter, and sort the students, then you’ll implement a grading system that exaggerates the distinctions to make things easier for university admissions officers and whatnot. (Part of that “whatnot” includes a cultural sense that there can’t be meaningful success without the failure of others. This, in turn, I think comes from a sort of Manichean idea that there is no good without evil. But, I certainly digress.)

This final bit is more me than the author, but poking at our grading system and questioning why we do what we do, you can see some of the accretions from bygone years. There are echoes of the 19th century when education was more of an aristocratic thing, used to justify and entrench privilege. There are echoes of the industrial revolution where we tried to standardize and mechanize everything. There are echoes of the Progressive Era, seeking some kind of objective perfectability of people and the related drift into eugenics.

Our reaction to change is probably going to reflect some of that entrenched privilege as well. When a high socioeconomic status area embraces the idea of designing a system where almost everyone is able to attain the academic objectives, it seems plausible and everyone getting As and Bs doesn’t seem as objectionable. When this happens in a low socioeconomic school system, you’ll get more of the protests about grade inflation and participation trophies. The aristocracy is to be nurtured, enhanced, and preserved. The masses are to be goaded and culled for their own good.

Like I said, this was all a bit stream-of-consciousness for me. So, I don’t have any strongly held opinions here. I just thought there were some interesting ideas to chew on.

The Expensive Lesson of ILEARN

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Presumably filled with ILEARN money leaving the state.

The State of Indiana is paying $40 million to the American Institutes for Research for a test that reaches the conclusion that 40% of West Lafayette Community School Corporation students lack proficiency in English and/or Math. I was hoping the ILEARN vendor contract had a “you get a refund if our product turns out to be bullshit” clause in it. Because that could have been useful.

I’m not shy about bragging about the West Lafayette school system. We have a bunch of smart kids from educated families and a test that says 39.5% of them are below proficiency in math or English is pretty clearly garbage. This is why it’s important that West Lafayette and schools like it take the lead in opposing the testing grift that has taken root in Indiana. It would be dead easy for our school system to cheer on the testing regime and reap the benefits from leading the pack when it comes to test results. When a school in the back of the pack makes these critiques, it looks like sour grapes and opens the school up to criticism that if they just did their job better, their students would test better. West Lafayette is largely immune from those lines of attack.

So, when the State spends $40 million to get a test that suggests 40% of West Lafayette students lack proficiency, it’s pretty clear the State just pissed away a lot of money. No grift can last forever, and maybe this one is falling apart. Fifteen years ago, Doghouse Riley wrote that ISTEP and similar requirements were “designed to prove that inner-city schools are failures right before we slash their funding, put the students in a lottery to attend schools run by the private sector, and call the whole thing off before it affects too many white people.” (The Washington Post history on Indiana school privatization suggests the ball really started rolling back in 1996.) My take has been that the push for vouchers and charters has been designed to subsidize religious education, break the teachers’ unions, and financially reward friends and well-wishers of the privatization advocates.

If Doghouse was right that the tests were intended to prove that the wrong sorts of schools were failures, the ILEARN is even more of a debacle. Having a test that makes good schools look sketchy might open people’s eyes to the possibility that the metrics were questionable all along. Combine that with the fact that we now have decades of data showing that charters and vouchers don’t improve outcomes. Throw in a particularly egregious smash and grab like the Indiana Virtual Schools, and suddenly the advocates of privatization as a market-based savior for the plight of underprivileged students trapped in “failing schools” start to look pretty silly. The man behind the curtain is becoming more obvious.

Delts at Miami suspended until 2034

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The Daily Beast and any number of outlets are reporting that Delta Tau Delta at Miami University has been suspended for 15 years due to hazing. I’ve mentioned before, by way of explaining that Paul Ryan never really had a chance to get my vote, that my fraternity did not hold the Delts in high esteem back when I was in college. So, I’m experiencing a fair bit of schadenfreude at the news. The fraternity had apparently had disciplinary problems in the early 2000s and were put on probation in 2016. Then along comes this incident where, among other things:

“Call 911. I feel like I’m going to die,” said John*, laying in his dorm room at Miami University in Ohio.

In the early morning hours of March 17, 2019, John had just escaped an alcohol-drenched violent hazing at the school’s Delta Tau Delta chapter, which featured a spiked paddle, according to a report released by the university last spring.

This month, the university informed the fraternity that it would be suspended for 15 years—until March 2034—because of that night, which resulted in John’s hospitalization with a blood-alcohol level of .231, according to the report. (For reference, the law considers an individual legally impaired at 0.08.)

. . .

That night, John said he was thrown on the ground, had liquid poured on him, was slapped in the face and then forced to do pushups while being kicked on both sides by multiple people.

In the police report, John noted that at some point after he began crying over the pain from being slapped with the spiked paddle, he said, “I am not going to be a part of this. I’m leaving,” but that the whole room went silent and it scared him.

“I was then told by an unfamiliar voice, ‘You will be okay. The first one hurts the most but now you are numb,’” John told the officer.

Why does this kind of thing continue to happen? My own fraternity had abandoned hazing when I was there in the early 90s. The worst I got was being told to Xerox the bottoms of my feet and have ten girls sign the copy. I had to find an out of the way copier, figure out how to get the bottoms of my feet copied, and then embarrass myself walking up to strangers at the library. But it was also kind of fun and nobody got hurt. The girls mostly laughed and none of them seemed put out by the request. I think there were maybe a couple of other things that I don’t remember, but they would have been mild and didn’t involve drinking or pain. Even so, they seemed to serve their purpose as a rite of passage.

But, almost 30 years later, we have the Delts using a spiked paddle, getting their pledges dangerously drunk, and beating them. One of the texts in the Daily Beast report has one of the fraternity brothers saying that it “turns boys into men.” That’s toxic nonsense. There’s nothing manly about letting people abuse you, particularly for no useful purpose.

My Dad told me a story about his fraternity in the early 60s. He and some of the other brothers were talking about getting rid of hazing. There was a fair amount of resistance to this idea based primarily on the notion that they  had to go through it. New pledges should have to suffer the same way. Beyond the “I had to do it, you should to,” I think there are also parallels to corporal punishment. People resist evidence that spanking and other corporal punishment doesn’t lead to better behaved kids and more responsible adults because their own parents spanked them. The idea that the beatings they suffered at the hands of their parents was useless and avoidable is emotionally painful. So, they want to imbue their suffering with meaning. If hazing doesn’t “turn boys into men” or tighten the bonds of brotherhood or whatever, then it’s just your older friends being needlessly cruel to you. And that’s emotionally painful.

Maybe in 2034, the Delts can kick the habit.

 

Kauai Part III: Na Pali Coast

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Ready to launch

(This is part 3 of an account of our family vacation to Kauai in late May, 2019. I love the traveling, of course. But, I’ve found that having an account of the trip helps me to revisit these trips from time to time. So, while these posts are primarily for my own benefit, hopefully others might enjoy riding along with us, so to speak. Part 1; Part 2.)

On Sunday, May 26, 2019, I may have seen more beautiful things than I’ve ever seen in a single day in my life. It began at the cabins at Koke’e. An ambitious rooster woke me up at 2:30 a.m. I was able to go back to sleep and woke up for real at 5. We packed up and were ready to go at 6:30 a.m. (Recall that this was on the heels of a hectic schedule at home prior to vacation, a 24 hour travel day on Friday, and a good bit of hiking (with flat tire!) on Saturday.)

Feeling fantastic.

Among other things, we packed up the firewood we had bought for the cabins. It can get a little cool up as high as we were, but we had fairly warm nights and didn’t use much wood. This would come in handy later. The drive out of the park was tough. We were on a schedule, trying to make our catamaran tour before the boat left without us. We took a wrong turn, and then one of the younger boys threw up on the winding road. We had some anxiety about getting to the catamaran trip late, but ultimately we made it to “Captain Andy’s” on time. The vessel was comfy and the crew was good. There were about 49 people on board. I can’t remember our captain’s name, but he said he’d come out to Kauai because his mom was working in real estate there. He ended up pursuing his boating license and was now in charge of the catamaran up the Na Pali coast. Snorkeling and getting in the water on this trip is a little hit and miss, apparently. For us, it was a bit of a “miss.” We got in the water at one point, but it was a little choppy, and the visibility for snorkeling was limited. Doing cannonballs off the deck was fun though.

The boys had a slightly different experience.

With the choppy seas, about half of our party got sick. At one point, the girls all had their heads on a table at the back of the ship and looked like they’d been over served. Cole, on the other hand, had the time of his life. During the worst of it, he planted himself as far forward as the crew would let him and looked like a ship’s figurehead cutting through the water. He loved the bounce and the spray. Amy and Harper had a distinctly different experience. A pod of spinner dolphins swam alongside our boat, we saw flying fish, and towering over all of it were the otherworldly cliffs of the Na Pali coast. It’s as far west as I’ve ever been, and it was like the real world was giving way while we were on the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, headed for the far reaches of Narnia or something.

Ready for some saimin!

When we got back to shore, the girls made a quick recovery, and we made our way back east and north where we were staying in Princeville on the north coast. (The road doesn’t go quite all the way around Kauai, so to get to the north from the west side of the island, you have to go all the way back around via the east coast.) As we passed through Lihue, we stopped at Hamura Saimin. In general, we didn’t have as many successes with food as we had had on the Big Island, but Hamura’s was one of those great successes. Saimin is a Hawaiian noodle dish with Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino influences. It has noodles with broth and onions, fishcake, and spam or other meat products. Hamura’s is nothing fancy, just a lunch counter, with a few dishes, mostly saimin. It was terrific.

We finally made our way to Princeville and enjoyed some beers on the patio at the house we were renting.At the end of the day, we watched the sunset over Hanalei Bay from the grounds of the Hanalei Bay Resort. The popular site for watching the sunset was an immaculately groomed lawn at the top of a steep hill overlooking the bay. This was accompanied by what we’d come to call ‘sunset music’ – a few people would come out to the lawn of the resort overlooking the bay and play a tune on their guitar or ukelele as the sun went down.

Not really a good segue for this, but a few sidenotes: Keeping with our tradition from the last visit to Hawaii, we had the radio permanently tuned to the station playing island music. Harper quickly became the master of the island playlist – adding a song whenever we heard one that we particularly enjoyed. “Slippahs” by Kepa Kruse was my favorite. The three girls shared a room. Rather than sharing a bed, Harper decided to sleep in a chair with a footstool which she happily did all week.

Gallery:

Kauai Part II: Koke’e State Park

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(This is part 2 of an account of our family vacation to Kauai in late May, 2019. I love the traveling, of course. But, I’ve found that having an account of the trip helps me to revisit these trips from time to time. So, while these posts are primarily for my own benefit, hopefully others might enjoy riding along with us, so to speak. Part 1 is here.)

One of our cabins at Koke’e.

The morning of Saturday, May 25th began with mediocre coffee that tasted of onions. Probably had to do with the coffee maker in the cabin. The accommodations were pretty bare bones but serviceable. We had some scones from the Big Save that were all right. Then we went to explore Koke’e. Problem was that our car had a flat tire. We seem to have hit a nail or something the previous night and the air was completely out of it. Jason and I put on the spare. We handed the lug nuts to Cole and proceeded to make “Christmas Story” jokes. (“Ooh fuuudge . . . only I didn’t say “fudge.”) While we were changing the tire, some folks were setting up for the “Pedal to the Meadow” bicycle race – a 15.75 mile race that starts at sea level in Kekaha and ends in the Kanaloahuluhulu Meadow up at about 3,800 feet. Our cabins were about a quarter mile from the finish. After getting the tire changed, we finally got under way. We drove the rest of the way up Highway 550 where we stopped at the Kalalau lookout, the Pu’u O Kila Lookout, and hiked about 2 miles on the Pihea Trail. This area is on the highland above the northwestern part of the island, looking down to the Na Pali coast. “Rugged and beautiful” is a good description, I think.

Fuuudge!

On the hike, I scared the two younger boys (ages 7 and 10), passing along my dad’s “mountain talk.” Some years ago, when I came out to Colorado to, among other things, explore the mountains there, my Dad who lived in Colorado was definitely happy to see me taking an interest. He was generally a jovial, jokey kind of person, but at one point, he got deadly earnest and told me, “Doug, if you don’t take them seriously, those mountains will kill you.” They are beautiful and fun to enjoy, but it’s not an amusement park. As we were hiking, the boys were getting a little close to the edges of the cliffs and whatnot, so I pulled them aside and gave them the talk. They don’t have a lot of direct experience with me, so I might have looked like a three-eyed monster to them at that point, but I think it left an impression. When we got back, we had lunch at the Koke’e lodge. The food was outstanding, definitely better than you’d expect from a lodge.

Living on the edge.

After lunch, due to the flat, Amy & I had to make the long drive back to Lihue to swap out cars with the rental agency. The roads in the state park were probably not a great idea on the doughnut tire. Theoretically, road side assistance came with the rental, but we had no cell service, so just taking the car back was realistically our best option. While we were at the rental place, Amy helped an Australian couple secure their child car seat which they were having trouble navigating. It’s been a lot of years since we had a kid in a car seat, but this is apparently one of those “riding a bicycle” things that you never forget. We also met some travelers from Logansport who were staying at the Marriott in Lihue.

On our way back, we stopped at some overlooks of the Waimea Canyon which is pretty incredible. Known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” it was created by both erosion – it takes in rainfall from Mount Wai’ale’ale, one of the wettest places on earth – and from the catastrophic collapse of the volcano that created Kauai. Meanwhile the kids stayed back with our friends. Jason apparently treated them to some off-roading in their rental car over some fairly rough terrain to get to a trailhead. Cole seemed particularly taken by the off-roading. (Just what you want when your boy is about to get his driver’s license.) From the trailhead, they hiked to a spot with a pool and waterfall that made for some good climbing and splashing around.

Dinner was improvised chicken and asparagus. The evening was rainy. We had 10 beers on hand that we split between the 4 adults and had generally a good time. Bed time was early as we had to get up at the crack of early to get to a catamaran trip the next day. As Hawaii time is 6 hours behind, Indiana, these time frames were no problem.

Gallery:


 

Kauai Part I: Travel, Seattle, and Kokee State Park

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(This is part 1 of an account of our family vacation to Kauai in late May, 2019. I love the traveling, of course. But, I’ve found that having an account of the trip helps me to revisit these trips from time to time. So, while these posts are primarily for my own benefit, hopefully others might enjoy riding along with us, so to speak.)

Photo Op at the Space Needle

It was one of those vacations that started with me coming in hot from my regular life. Lots of work stuff in April and May combined with soccer season left me feeling more like I’d simply abandoned my responsibilities rather than actually coming to a good stopping place. That was more illusion than real and probably illustrated the fact that I needed to take a break. We left on the afternoon of Thursday, May 23. Amy introduced me to Portillo’s on the way up to Chicago. The Chicago Dog and cheese fries were a good starting point for vacation.

We were catching an early flight out of O’Hare, so the four of us crammed into a Comfort Inn in Des Plaines that night. The hotel was relatively nice on the surface, but seemed just on the edge of falling apart if you scratch the surface: Just little things like a loose post on the baggage trolley and a wobbly rail in the elevator. The chief advantage of this place was that we could get a night’s sleep, leave our car for the duration of the vacation, and get a ride to the airport all for not much more than parking alone would have cost near the airport. So, despite my critiques here, it more than met our needs. Random note: Before falling asleep, Cole & I watched some video game championship that was being broadcast. Video games have come a long way!

Harper at the Space Needle, humoring Dad with a picture

The next morning (May 24), Amy got up at 3:30 a.m. and the rest of us got up at 4 for what would end up being something like 21.5 hours of travel. At the airport, we met up with our family friends with whom we’d gone on a vacation to the Big Island four years earlier. The first leg from O’Hare to Seattle was uneventful. Harper had to sit in a row with strangers but she slept through most of it. (In fact, at one point, I think her head was on one of the strangers while she was asleep.) We had a 6 hour layover and decided to kill time by going out to the Space Needle. On some level, I thought this was inviting trouble because of the uncertainties of traffic and getting back through security. But, as usual, Amy has the better instincts on these things. None of that was a problem, and the side trip was more worthwhile than sitting in an airport terminal. Paulo was our Uber driver over to the Needle. He had the sniffles which I mention because, despite not being a germophobe in general, I’m always paranoid about getting sick before vacation. Once again, my worries proved groundless.

At the food court near the Space Needle, we introduced Cole to the concept of the “Bang Bang.” This was something our friend Jason picked up from a comedian somewhere. The idea is that you eat a full meal in one place and then immediately go to another place for another full meal. We’ve never actually done this, but “stop for a Bang Bang?” has become kind of a running joke. The Space Needle itself is touristy but at least briefly entertaining. Kind of perfect for a layover. The architecture is interesting, but you’ve seen it a thousand times before on TV and whatnot. You go up high and see the city. There is an area with a glass floor that’s fun. On the way back, our Uber driver was Paul. He liked to talk. He apparently met his wife at university in Arizona before returning to Seattle. He’d been to Hawaii with his family a few years back. His 60 year old mom did some cliff diving in Oahu. His wife was pretty far along in her pregnancy for most of the trip and somewhat limited on what she could do. (The trip had been planned in advance of the pregnancy.) So now you have the run down on Paul.

Pals

On the way back to Sea-Tac, traffic was light and security was minimal. We had time for a drink and a snack before our flight. Our next leg was Seattle to Lihue on Kauai. I sat with Cole and Madda, one of the daughters from the family we traveled  with. They’re both 15 and have known each other since preschool. As I recall, the fact that they were in preschool together is the reason our families know each other at all. (I have a theory that a lot of adult friendships feature oldest children of a similar age. When you have your first kid, you’ve entered a distinctly new phase in life and need friends who are in a similar phase. By the time you have younger kids, you’ve sort of filled the friendship rosters a little bit.) Anyway, watching these two laugh and joke with each other was fun. They don’t hang out a bunch anymore, but clearly they’ve known each other and enjoyed each other’s company for a long, long time. We landed in Lihue at about 5:30 in the afternoon (10:30 p.m. Chicago time at this point.)

On the Road to Lihue

The car rental places don’t move with a lot of speed in Hawaii, so while Amy waited in line, I killed time watching the chickens outside. Kauai has a lot of chickens. Eventually they’d fade into the background, but at this point they were novel. There was also an entertaining moment where a girl of about 3 or 4 was waiting outside with her dad. He suggested they go check on mom inside. She had a cute little butterfly suitcase. Her face got stern and serious and she expressed concerns about people stealing her butterfly which was in front of the bench next to Cole & I. Clearly, we looked disreputable. From Lihue we drove about 40 miles to Kokee State Park where we were staying in cabins for the first couple of days. Along the way, we stopped at the Big Save in Waimea for supplies and squabbled about directions once or twice because it was dark and we were utterly exhausted. Finally, we finished the long, winding road (15 miles of twists and turns in total darkness) up to Kokee and got out of the car. We were at what felt like the edge of the world, at altitude, miles away from civilization, so the stars were spectacular. Cole was so deeply asleep in the car, it was a challenge to get him up. We used to just pick him up and carry him to bed, but at 15 that’s not happening anymore. Gentle voice, loud voice, light shake, light shake with gentle voice, light shake with loud voice, firm shake with gentle voice, firm shake with loud voice. A few of the latter got his body moving, but it’s clear that his mind was still checked out. We walked him to his bed and got him tucked in. Then we all collapsed and had a good night’s sleep.

Gallery:

On Reading

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Not this is particularly controversial, but reading is good for the brain. In retrospect, I’m a little amazed by just how much I seem to have read as a kid. Near as I can remember, the first book of any substance I read was Jack London’s “White Fang” when I was 9. I don’t remember reading too much outside of my assignments once I got to college. (I’d pick it up more again when I graduated.) It was something I always enjoyed, so it wasn’t any kind of chore or accomplishment. But, what I’ve found is that all of those stories gave my brain a sort of vocabulary or library of metaphors I’m able to use when I see a fact pattern in the real world.

What prompted this idle bit of musing is that, today, it occurred to me that our current political situation in the U.S. might be a little reminiscent of Tolkien’s story of Numenor. In the beginning, it was an island given to the good humans for their service to the Valar and the Elves in their war against Morgoth. The land was prosperous as the knowledge and mastery of its people grew. Eventually their power extended over the seas and around the world. They helped the Elves back in the old country defeat an evil empire. But, a darkness grew. Numenor’s leaders, despite enjoying untold wealth, power, and longevity, found that what they had was not enough. They wanted eternal life. Sauron used this to corrupt them until they worshiped and became the evil they once fought against.

Now, I’m not saying that Trump is Ar-Pharazôn the Golden who will ruin the country in his pride by invading Valinor. But, because I’ve read stories such as these, I have learned lessons about hubris and how a good people can be led astray. Books are full of lessons! Forewarned is forearmed.

(Incidentally, this random, somewhat pointless quick hit type of blog post comes from a notion that generating content for Facebook and Twitter isn’t necessarily the best use of my time. If I feel inclined to ramble to the world, might as well just do it here.)