Looks like Google Earth down there.

Chris said, “Here, watch this movie with Denzel Washington about a domestic terrorist guy who blows up a ferry full of little kids and babies.” I did. Then I asked him, “Where are we going now?” He said, “To ride that ferry.” Aaaaaa!

Scary Ferry

Scary Voodoo Garden

That’s Big Bro. Best New Orleans tour guide from west of the Pecos.

FEMA Trailer Obama Supporters

George,

Thanks for everything.

Love,

People of the 9th Ward

One of these things goes up and down.

Always willing to give a light... encouraging bad habits.

Chris took me to Mardi Gras World. That’s where the make floats for the parades and stuff. They also make stuff for Disney World and all kinds of stuff. Everything starts with foam. Then everything get either paper mache or fiber glass. Learned some good techniques for rockets!

Cutting Great Stuff with a razor knife.

Original and really big Genie.

Mayor of Chocolate City

Sometimes they recycle sculptures. We thought Ray looked slightly Chinese.

Borglund Prototype

Frogman

You have to love frogmen. Period.

Save the polar bears... from second hand smoke.

Monster looking at Chris1

Styrofoam Iron Man

We decided this place would be a great location for a zombie movie. Help me Iron Man!

Is that boxing pose from the 1890s?

Chris is always ready for a zombie attack. Go Chris!

New Orleans got bugs!

Ready for zombies, but not giant praying mantises. Almost lost him there.

I'm telling Mom!

They said that each krewe spends more than a quarter of a million dollars a year on beads and trinkets to throw at parades. Expensive! They should stick with Chris, because he wouldn’t let them pay for anything accept their bag on the plane home only because they pulled out a twenty really really fast and shoved it over the counter.

Locofloation

This dragon had millions of LEDs on it. Chris says it looks really great at night.

Dragon Float

Restaurant with a great view of the Grand Tetons

This is where we had steaks. Chris also made steaks in the apartment that were just actually little bit better. Watch out Bourbon Street. Chris broiled them in the oven on a super-seasoned iron skillet and then he super-seasoned the steaks with New Orleans-style stuff in a little can. Mmmm! Amy said she was going to fix me steaks. So far, no steaks. What’s up with that?

Texting Texting Texting

Chris in his natural environment. He’s always either: (a) answering work questions on the Blackberry; or (b) text messaging Autumn and Logan (to find out if his Legos are crap).

Scary Tour Guide

One night, we went on the Haunted New Orleans Tour. Scaarryy!

Super Scary Shadow

Super Scary Andrew Johnson

This guy was the scariest on the tour. He once evicted millions of men, women, and children from Georgia, sending them on the Trail of Tears. Jerk.

Scary Stop on Haunted Tour

Nick Cage

The lady that lived in this house chained her slaves to the kitchen stove and tortured and killed people during dinner parties. America’s first Martha Stewart.

Scary Abandoned Amusement Park

Not on the tour, but should be. Creepy abandoned amusement park. Chris said it was a disaster of civic planning. People were dropping their kids of with summer passes, because it was cheaper than daycare. Now it’s full of rats and snakes… and creepy midway stuffed animals.

Brad

You can tell these two are real hippies for sure. They had their gas lanterns turned off. To save energy, no doubt. But, then they do have all those kids to feed and clothe.

Great place New Orleans. Still pretty messed up from Hurricane Katrina. I’ll ad some more pics when I can. And, oh yeah, we had beniets like three times at Cafe du Monde. Made my hands sticky the whole first day, but well worth it. Last time someone made beniets at home, four little punk neices and nephews ate every last one while I was still asleep. You know who you are, and I will not forget it. And we went to Dragos for charbroiled oysters. Wow. And we went to Two Sisters or something like that for a big huge breakfast. I cracked a waiter up at Two Sisters. Chris tripped on the stairs and saved himself from breaking his neck. I said, “Man, we almost had a lawsuit!” And the waiter just laughed and laughed and laughed… white people. They had really good omelets, bacon, biscuits with jam, sausage, potatoes, pecan pie, and coconut cake, and coffee… and I had ate all of it… some things I had seconds. Ooh… I feel full just thinking about it. Chris is the best host in the world. We saw all kinds of stuff, and I even got to sit in on two meetings like I actually had a real full time job… with none of the stress. I just kept nodding my head, “Mmm hmmm. Yes.”

Lessons learned: Always take pictures of the food before you start chowing down (i.e., ruin the presentation). Never pass up a steak. Sometimes people don’t know where Mardi Gras World is, even if it is in their own neighborhood. Don’t pay all your money out to a no bid government contractor in one lump sum before they do any work. If your little buzzy thing doesn’t go off after waiting at the restaurant for like an hour… maybe it’s broken. Don’t be afraid to go to a voodoo shop… even if your wife tells you like twenty times… “Stay away from the voodoo!” Mom’s voodoo charm helped her find her ice-gripper that she lost on her walk. Go figure. If Ray Nagin says, “Leave!”, leave. Hollywood can really make a realistic looking ferry explosion. The guy who founded Mardis Gras World is really pretty light on his feet. Denzel Washington always plays basically the same guy. Don’t mess with mother nature. No matter what your architect says, a trapezoidal roof is never a good idea. Houses float. Movies actually look pretty good on an iPod. Construction management software looks really, really, boring. New Orleans wedding parties have parades with brass bands. It is a small world, because a guy with a steel guitar will find another guy who plays washboard… it will hapen… and it’s magic. Whatever.

Now, how long would it take me to ride my bike to New Orleans… hmmm?

The perfect mode of transport… and a really big cement pond.

Old stone doesn’t match new stone. No one cares. Get over it.

Birdy… lit by the taxpayer. Not bad.

Temporary lodgings.

Permanent resident… patiently awaiting B-Rock.

Owner of priceless Alexander Calder’s Cheval Rouge birdhouse (inset, NGA).

Forced the Moon into perfect alignment… with psychic mind control.

Not bad.

Thanks Amy for a perfect trip.

10-4,

Me

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, “What’s so unbelievable about the FLeYeball?” Well, let me tell you. It flew. It was totally ill-conceived, and wholly not aerodynamic. It should have careened into the air like an out-of -control Macy’s Day balloon, and pummeled into the ground like a like a frozen turkey dropped from a helicopter, but it didn’t… it flew. And baby it flew perfectly. Well, maybe not exactly perfectly. It launched in a perfect parabola over 33 North 28th Street. Only problem was, the rocket motor was still firing on the downward leg. All indications pointed towards a catastrophic collision with terra firma. But alas, the gods of pint-sized propulsion were smiling on us. We located the FLeYeball hanging like a delicate Christmas ornament, about 8-feet from the ground in a tree in the neighbor’s yard.

The FleYeball was constructed especially for the best optometrist west of Cape Canaveral, my big sister, Dr. Elisabeth J. Binnig of Westerville, OH., in celebration of her 32nd* birthday. It was conceived in response to the expression, “You’ll put your eye out with that thing!” Instead of a rocket you could put your eye out with, it’s an eye put out with a rocket rocket. Congratulations EJB on an excellent flight!

* Not consistent with Betsy’s chronological age (here based on her being three years my senior, and my having been 29 for the last several years).

Congratulations Jasson! And congratulations to all the other brave students who showed up!

Stay tuned for more championship awards. I’m sure we’ll be handing out more before the semester is complete.

10-4,

Barry

I was in Chicago last week and went to see the polar bears at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I stood in front of the glass for about 45 minutes, watching the polar bear pair swim in repetitive, looping arcs, round and round, one clockwise, the other counterclockwise (one must have been from the Antarctic). There’s nothing quite so peaceful and mesmerizing as watching polar bears swim. The one you see here, would gulp some air, dive to the bottom, push off a rock, woosh past the glass, look down, turn around, push off the wall, and do it all over again, and again, and again. I couldn’t figure out whether or not he was doing it to amaze the visitors peering through from the visitor side of the glass partition, or whether he was doing it just for the sake of doing it. I worried he might be sad.

But then, I thought about one of my favorite things to do, ride my recumbent trike. Sometimes, after a long ride, when it’s getting a little too dark to safely ride on the street, or when I want to stay pretty close to home, I ride circles around First English Lutheran Church. The congregation at FELC has been thoughtful enough to construct their parking lot in an approximate 1/10th mile oval. It’s smoothly paved, no bumps, fairly level, with just enough variation to make it interesting. Riding around the circle can be mesmerizing. I know I’ve done up to 10 miles (100 laps) at a stretch. It’s soothing, calming, and entirely enjoyable, riding around and around.

So, if I were not so busy, with work, school, and other stuff, and was held captive in a large, walled-in viewing area, I might be inclined to ride my trike around in endless, looping circles. I think I’d go clockwise. And if there were little kids? Yeah, I think I’d ride right up to the glass and swiftly swoop away.

So, when life is getting a little too hectic, think of the polar bears at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and do a little “transcontinental” meditation. Imagine yourself on display someplace far away, perhaps even on Kurt Vonnegut’s planet Tralfamador. Envision yourself looping around and around, amazing visitors with your looping and looping around. Works for the polar bears. Works for me. I suggest you give it a try.

10-4,

Barry

The research project I finished was an inquiry into the possible presence and/or influence of “traditional” gender role socialization, on the events and circumstances surrounding the recent Hayes Arboretum controversy. If your not familiar with it; basically, the Hayes Foundation rezoned 33+ acres of forested nature preserve, located directly on top of a sensitive aquifer that supplies 33% of the city’s drinking water, for the purposes of building a strip mall. Trees and wildlife, gone. Frisch’s Big Boy, Walgreens, Kohl’s, Starbucks, and Menards, going strong. For further detail, check out:

www.fotaweb.com

and/or

www.hayesarboretum.org.

During the course of my research, I interviewed four proponents and 3 opponents of the rezoning, land sale, and strip mall development. And, in doing so, I thought I was basically just going through the motions necessary to confirm my suspicions that the strip mall people were sexist and a few leaves shy of a tree limb (if you know what I mean). I was wrong.

Interview-based research requires that the researcher actually listen to interviewees’ own stories in order to identify their beliefs and attitudes. And in doing so in my own research, I found something I hadn’t expected. The imagined tree-killing, strip-malling, evildoers were… regular people. In fact, they were extremely similar to us, the good people. All of the respondents had similar backgrounds. Most all were fervent supporters of nature and animals and all that sort of stuff. All wanted to protect the water supply. All were advocates of economic development, job creation, and increasing the tax base. All wanted to save the Arboretum, to the point that both laid claim to the title, “Friends of the Arboretum.” They all wanted the same things, but they were never able to communicate this fact. They came at the issue with different perspectives, and in that they were not required to listen to each other in order to get a good grade on their papers at IU East, they never came to understand one another’s point of view. Drat.

My step-father regularly states as his own personal maxim, “Communications, world’s biggest problem.” To which my mother jokingly replies, “What?” In a more tragic/comic than joking way, they express the issue concisely. We did not listen; therefore, we did not understand; therefore we did not communicate; therefore, we missed a real opportunity to cooperate on a solution that would satisfy all parties involved. Drat.

At the Lincoln Museum, I realized, quite inadvertently, that I am not the first to recognize this fact that we all have much more in common than in difference, yet consistently fail to communicate. During the first famous Lincoln Douglas debate, Abraham Lincoln related:

“Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North, and become tiptop Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go South, and become most cruel slave-masters.”

Here, Lincoln demonstrates that people, generally speaking, really are quite similar. And he identifies with his Southern foes, in that he knows that, given different circumstances, he might have exactly the same perspective on the issue, of in this case, slavery. Unfortunately however, he seems to have come to the conclusion that, a house divided cannot stand, and that the only solution was for one side, whichever side, to beat the other side into submission, at a total cost of over 618,000 lives. Maybe there was no real alternative, but man, that’s a tough way to go.

So, it’s been 148 years, 11 months, and 24 days since Lincoln made this first debate speech, and we still have a lot in common, but are still also not listening to and identifying with one another. Drat. It’s a lesson that, for me, has been a long time coming, but one that I think I’ve finally got. Here, in this blog, on this day, August 14, 2007, I do solemnly declare my commitment to listen in order to understand.

In all seriousness, asking questions, listening, understanding, and empathizing with others may not be practical, viable, efficient, or effective in every circumstance, but it is something. It’s something we can do, everyday, to work towards a better tomorrow. I’m thankful for having the opportunity IU East has given me to learn such a valuable lesson. All I have to do now, is do my best to apply it.

P.S. I do recommend this: if you have a chance, check out the Lincoln Museum (it’s rated one of America’s 50 top museums; and, if you get a chance, check out IU East (it’s rated #1 in my book, which I haven’t written yet, but come on, I just finished that big paper). And, it’s so cool that the admission to the museum is $5 (with Lincoln on it) and they give you back a penny (with Lincoln on it). They don’t hand out pennies at IU East, but sometimes I do leave a nickel on top of the coffee machine on the first floor of Middlefork Hall. Just sayin’.

Sometimes, in college, you find yourself studying in some pretty weird places… this was one of those times. My wife is a development officer for a small college in northern Indiana. While she was meeting with an alumnus inside a cool, comfortable, air-conditioned bank, I was outside in my library, I mean car, sweating it out, reading about social psychology. “What is a development officer,” you ask? Well, jokingly I tell people my wife shakes down old people for money. That would be wrong. What my wife really does is travel around visiting with alumni, keeping them apprised of events and activities on campus, and of course, providing them with opportunities to support the institution. Someday, I hope to be one of these people… that is a “visitee” rather than a visitor (one officer in the family is enough; there’s a lot of traveling and hard work involved). I can’t really imagine, right now, that I would want to give money back to the university… I mean, wouldn’t that be kind of crazy? But, that is where a substantial portion of university funding comes from, alumni contributions. If you think about it, we pay tuition, but without alumni contributions, the costs would be much higher. I guess it kind of means someone helped us through school, so we should return the favor. Hopefully, (fingers crossed) the education we receive at IU East will enable us to do so.

I think it has for at least one recent graduate, and my new role model, Stormi Shafer. You might remember her from an earlier post when she met the creator of the Internet, Walter W. Walb. She recently graduated from IU East with a BSS degree with a concentration in psychology. Yesterday, she text messaged me saying, “i love my job.” She used her degree to land a job at Pearson Education. “Who are they,” you ask? Take a look at one of your textbooks. There’s a pretty good chance, it’s a Pearson Education product. Cool. As I sweat and study in my car/bookmobile, I tell myself, “Think about Stormi, she graduated, and so can you.” I’ve just got to make it through the summer. Hopefully, in a few years, Stormi, myself, and all the other folks studying at IUE, will be successful to the extent that… people like my wife will be shaking us down.

10-4,

Barry

P.S. Don’t worry, I never read while driving… it makes it too hard to take notes.

Back to the books (see previous post).

10-4,

Barry