At this level of teaching, most of us are authors. We author books and textbooks. We publish articles in our areas of scholarly endeavors and obviously have written a thesis or two. Very few of us, though, are writers.
True writers are artists. The blank page is their canvas and their words are brushstrokes that paint indelible images as vivid to the eye as if Renoir or Monet stood at the easel.
It is not often that I’ve come across a newspaper columnist who is, by my definition, a writer. The late Mike Royko, Bob Greene and humorist Dave Barry come to mind while Stew Rieckman, doesn’t. But to the list of the former I add Rob Kaiser from the Appleton Post-Crescent.
Read his Sunday front page column, http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007711180559
and try not to be moved. You can’t. His words paint an indelible picture. Those painted words draw you in. We smell, we see, and we feel the story. He is a writer and a very good one at that. I look forward to reading more of his work.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Halloween!
I’m a simple guy, really I am. I enjoy simple things. Simple things are fun. Simple things like watching the Chicago Bears lose, fun! Another one of these simple things is Halloween. Candy, kids in costumes, the whole bit. Fun. Really.
My ire has been raised though by an apparent societal movement of wrecking Halloween for kids and for those simple folk such as me. This movement is coming from two schools of thought. Movement one comes from the very fundamentalist Christian folks who see Halloween as Satanic Rituals (ooh!) taking over the hearts and minds of our children. Newsflash one to these folks, giving a KitKat bar to an eight old year old dressed as Ninja Turtle is not going to convert anyone to a follower of ol’ Beelzebub. Newsflash two, Harry Potter is make-believe!
The second school of thought is directly opposite the bible-thumpers. We must stamp out Halloween because it is a Christian Holiday. It is that whole separation of church and state thing thus, public grade schools everywhere have FallFest and Pumpkin Days instead of ‘trick or treating’ and Halloween. Jesus was nailed to a cross, died and went to Heaven ……so kids can get those little tubes of Whopers (personal fav) and boxes of MilkDuds because they are dressed like Shrek? Yeah, right!
True, some of the origin of modern Halloween is rooted in Christian tradition but actually early Christianity co-opted many of the pagan and druid traditions of harvest celebrations. Those crazy druids were of course worshiping trees, bushes and sacrificing the occasional goat in the name of their religion during the harvest season and early Christians must have thought, there has got to be a better way and they of course came up with those little peanut chewy things wrapped in the orange and black wax paper (who eats those things, anyway?) as a way to spread their enlightened thinking.
Halloween is, or should be, a kid’s holiday. Ya hoo, free candy! Costumes! Pretend to be something you’re not (hmmm, are we talking presidential primaries or ‘trick or treating’).
If you don’t like Halloween, don’t participate. Keep your kids out of the costume contest at school, turn your porch light off and don’t hand out candy. Stay home and read your bible. Stay home and gnash your teeth about how only you can save the world from the horrors of the spread bite-size Snickers.
My ire has been raised though by an apparent societal movement of wrecking Halloween for kids and for those simple folk such as me. This movement is coming from two schools of thought. Movement one comes from the very fundamentalist Christian folks who see Halloween as Satanic Rituals (ooh!) taking over the hearts and minds of our children. Newsflash one to these folks, giving a KitKat bar to an eight old year old dressed as Ninja Turtle is not going to convert anyone to a follower of ol’ Beelzebub. Newsflash two, Harry Potter is make-believe!
The second school of thought is directly opposite the bible-thumpers. We must stamp out Halloween because it is a Christian Holiday. It is that whole separation of church and state thing thus, public grade schools everywhere have FallFest and Pumpkin Days instead of ‘trick or treating’ and Halloween. Jesus was nailed to a cross, died and went to Heaven ……so kids can get those little tubes of Whopers (personal fav) and boxes of MilkDuds because they are dressed like Shrek? Yeah, right!
True, some of the origin of modern Halloween is rooted in Christian tradition but actually early Christianity co-opted many of the pagan and druid traditions of harvest celebrations. Those crazy druids were of course worshiping trees, bushes and sacrificing the occasional goat in the name of their religion during the harvest season and early Christians must have thought, there has got to be a better way and they of course came up with those little peanut chewy things wrapped in the orange and black wax paper (who eats those things, anyway?) as a way to spread their enlightened thinking.
Halloween is, or should be, a kid’s holiday. Ya hoo, free candy! Costumes! Pretend to be something you’re not (hmmm, are we talking presidential primaries or ‘trick or treating’).
If you don’t like Halloween, don’t participate. Keep your kids out of the costume contest at school, turn your porch light off and don’t hand out candy. Stay home and read your bible. Stay home and gnash your teeth about how only you can save the world from the horrors of the spread bite-size Snickers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)