Category: local

true value

Yesterday I went to Home Depot to purchase non-lethal mousetraps.

As I entered the store, I saw a young man slowly moving items from one box to another. He glanced up at me, we made eye contact for the briefest of moments, and he quickly turned away. “That’s okay,” I thought while scanning the banners at the end of each vast aisle, “I’m sure I can find someone to ask.” And I meandered over to the “Garden Center” banner, thinking it a more likely spot than “Plumbing” or “Electrical”.

The Garden Center was full of barbeque grills, cleaning supplies, and even candles — but there were no mousetraps of any sort in sight. So I kept wandering.

I wandered through half the store looking for clues, or at least an employee. Finally, in Cabinets, there appeared an obese man in an orange apron.

“Excuse me,” I said. He turned his head so that he was almost looking at me. “I’m looking for non-lethal mousetraps.” He blinked.

“For what?” he said slowly.

“Non-lethal mousetraps.”

He blinked again, but the eyes that opened were no more comprehending. “Uh. I guess that would be Garden. Down at the end of the store, through the sliding doors, outside.” Another man in an orange apron walked by, and the obese man confirmed that they thought that if they had them they would most likely be in Garden, but there was really no way to be sure.

I thanked them and began walking back toward the sliding glass doors. The obese man in an orange apron remained glued to his spot in Cabinets.

I passed through the sliding glass doors into the inferno that was the outdoor section of Garden. “Near the insecticides,” they’d said, but I could find no insecticides. Just bags and bags of dirt. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of dirt.

I began a fresh search for an employee, thinking that perhaps another orange apron could further narrow the hunt. There was no orange anywhere.

I walked back inside and took one more trip down the Garden aisle. There were no mousetraps; there were no employees.

I kept walking, right back out to my car.

This afternoon, I went to Hepfer’s True Value Hardware at the Highland Plaza in Lemoyne to purchase non-lethal mousetraps.

I walked in through the sliding glass doors and a blonde woman in a white t-shirt emblazoned with the words “True Value Hardware” looked up.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m looking for non-lethal mousetraps.”

She smiled and nodded. “Let me just get Ray to show you were they are. Ray?!”

Ray appeared.

“Can you show her where the non-lethal mousetraps are?”

Ray nodded, and began walking. I followed.

We arrived at a wall of assorted kinds of mousetraps.

“This what you’re looking for?” he asked, placing it in my hands.

It was exactly what I was looking for.

I took it to the front. I paid for it. I said thank you. I left.

CircleFest

What are you doing this Sunday? That’s what I thought.

Instead of being bored silly, come to the Forum for the CircleFest blues concert and silent auction!

I happened to be in close proximity to the last rehearsal, featuring both student musicians from The Circle School and the very talented folks from the Blues Society, and WOW! The music was amazing, the energy was through the roof, and my excitement grew exponentially. They’ve got four blues bands lined up, including Nate Myers and the Aces, one of the hottest acts in town. It’s going be quite an afternoon.

To summarize, come to the Forum from 2-6 PM on Sunday, May 1st for:

* A great blues fest featuring top area bands (and how often can you do this in a smokefree environment?), and
* great deals on all kinds of things at the silent auction while supporting the only democratic school in PA.

You can order tickets here.

santorum

I don’t know enough about the Democratic candidates for US Senate to have picked a favorite (I figure I have some time, since the election isn’t until 2006), but it’s clear to me that Santorum needs to go. Here’s one synopsis of why:

Daily Kos :: Definitive Rick Santorum Diary: Your Talking Points

My personal dislike for Santorum is all based on things that I can’t find links for, but you might be able to find your own reasons for disliking him right on his own website. He is, I guess, a pretty typical Bushite, complete with talk about the culture of life, activist judges, and how liberals encourage pedophilia and man on dog action. The normal stuff.

Bob Casey’s the candidate who currently appears in the best position to defeat Santorum. Here’s a list of other announced and potential candidates, some of whom might be more palatable.

I’m pretty much of the “anybody but Santorum” mindset.

Wildwood Writers’ Festival

One of the perks of being a student (as opposed to having one of those “job” things) is that if I feel like skipping class, I can. It doesn’t happen often, but when I heard that Jack Veasey and Barbara DeCesare were going to be reading on campus as part of the Wildwood Writers’ Festival, well, it was clear that I wouldn’t be attending my Macroeconomics class. And when I subsequently heard that Gene Hosey was going to be reading immediately after that, Comparative Politics went out the window. And so it happened that my morning yesterday was spent listening to some very fine poets.

The combination of poets was wonderful. Jack with an incredible gift for seeing the world from the inside out, treating his subjects with such an honesty, gentleness, and disarming wit that they themselves become the poems, riding on his tender eloquence. Barbara with her frank cynicism and ebullient reading style, shattering expectations and illusions. Gene with his jaded hopefulness, recognizing absurdity and challenging us to keep going anyway (maybe this is Camus’s definition of hope?).

And then there was Joe Weil, the surprise of the day. I don’t know how many people there were already familiar with him (someone must have been, right?), but I’d never heard of him. This guy, it turns out, is real and raw, funny and moving, and one hell of a poet. I hope some of the local hosts are able to get him to come back.

The biggest drawback to the event was that so much of the audience was required by their professors to be there. While it meant that the room was pretty full for most of the day, it also meant that the energy level was lower than it could have been. I also didn’t attend the open reading the followed the last session of the day, so I don’t know what that was like. If you were there, post a comment and tell us how it went!

Today is the second and final day of the festival. I’m half considering going in at noon to hear Philip Billings, who I’ve heard is good, but, ultimately, will probably not end up doing so. So if you do, let me know how he was.

More on Dover

Sidenote: My apologies if this is incoherent. I’m exhausted. I was going to use this space to tell you about why, but I think that’ll have to wait until after the holiday. In case I forget to post on Saturday, have a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and a very good just-another-day if you don’t. And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast…

According to an attorney for the Dover Area School District, a restraining order is not necessary to prevent the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology classes next month. Of course, none of the articles I’ve found seem to offer any specifics about what’s being taught instead. While I suppose it’s unlikely that Dover biology teachers are the driving force behind this law, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that ID, in some form, was already being taught.

My sophomore 20th century US history class at Red Land High School included three days of lecture (well, argument, since I was in the class) on creationism and its merits, presented in the guise of “learning” about the Scopes Monkey Trial. The thing is, it doesn’t matter so much what the official policy is, or what’s Constitutional or not. For better or worse, teachers are going to manage to work their beliefs into the classroom.

In some ways, I think that’s good. It’s important to learn that people have different views. I also think it’s okay to point out that there are holes in Darwinism. I think, in a class about Christianity, it’d be good to point out that there are a lot of unaccounted for years in Christ’s life. I don’t think we should guard any one idea from criticism simply because we’re afraid of the current alternatives.

My tenth grade history teacher began his Scopes lecture by saying, “In order to believe in evolution, two things are necessary: you must have faith, and you must believe in the spontaneous creation of life.” My hand was in the air. “Uh, isn’t that what’s necessary to believe in creationism?” I got no satisfactory answer, of course, but that didn’t stop him from proceeding to tell us that this proved that creationism was a better model.

While there were elements of truth in his initial statement, holes in one theory are not sufficient evidence that another is true. It seems like this is the entire premise of the ID argument — there is no other science involved. In my mind, this should preclude it from being taught in a science class.

I think it would be cool to offer an Origin Theory class, examining Darwinism, ID, literal biblical creationism, and perhaps creation “theories” from other cultures and religions, too. Kind of a very focused comparative religion class. But not a science class.

As long as we have a government monopoly on education, I’d like to see a wider variety of subjects and perspectives being taught in public schools. The Supreme Court has said that the 14th Amendment gives parents the right to educate their children as they see fit. Provide opportunities for children to receive the right education for them, as they and their parents see it. Don’t force anything.

And especially not in a science class.

Mostly, I’m kicking myself for not raising a bigger stink about that 10th grade “history” teacher.

Intelligent Design?

Pennsylvania’s School of Creationism

There’s a fine line.

I’m frustrated by my recent inner turmoil about whether or not to be offended by a Menorah at a public function, and then about whether or not to be offended by my own lack of offence. I’m frustrated that we are so PC that we are automatically offended by symbols of the majority holiday, but encouraging (in a vaguely patronizing way) of symbols of minority holidays.

I’m frustrated that we are so adamant about removing anything even vaguely related to religion (especially majority religion) from any institution even vaguely related to government. I dislike our society’s current trend toward “Scientism” over any and all ideas that cannot be explained in a laboratory.

Sometimes I even believe in something that could be described as “intelligent design”, although I doubt it’s something most Christians would recognize as such.

And yet…

In a town only ten miles from mine, they are mandating the teaching of Creationism in high school biology classes. Mostly, I’m appalled.

There’s a fine line. I don’t know where to draw it.

(And as a side note, perhaps this, along with the claim that “45 per cent of Americans believe that humans were created by God in their current form within the past 10,000 years”, could be indicative of an atmosphere in which it is secularists, rather than Christians, who are most eager to loosen restrictions on private schools and vouchers. A natural shift, if “liberal” has anything to do with “liberty”.)

Fundraiser

For those of you who live in the Harrisburg area — on December 17, 18, & 19, if you shop at the Borders on Jonestown Road and use the certificate below, they’ll donate 15% of your sale to The Circle School. I don’t normally post stuff like this, but I’ve been procrastinating on my holiday shopping and plan to do some of it at Borders. So if you’re in the same boat, print this out, and take it with you next weekend!

BordersCertificate.jpg