About half of this last year was spent in a small town half way between Philadelphia and Wilmington. The first trip through the middle of this town was right after a snow storm with the dirty snow piled up on the sidewalk. With the urban decay that had hit the area my thoughts went to pictures of Berlin, circa 1945. This was the town I would spend a big portion of the next year and a half working.

The town’s name is Chester and its the place that Wm. Penn first set foot in Pennsylvania. Over that next year and a half I learned to appreciate certain qualities of that town. The major one was that every residential block I saw in that town had at least one business on the corner to serve the neighborhood. These businesses ranged from dry cleaners to restaurants to barber shops and hair dressers to small boutique clothing stores. All of them small and catering primarily to people within walking distance. I can’t say anything was pretty about the town but living there would be convenient. Read more »

I use Charter Communications for both my cable TV and as my ISP. Tonight my son informed me that every channel in our lineup that isn’t available as broadcast TV had changed. He was concerned that some of the shows he had set up to record on his Tivo would not record. I assured him that Tivo would receive the lineup change and record his shows for him and proceeded to show him. Tivo hadn’t been informed.

I went to Charter’s website to get an updated lineup. It told me one wasn’t available for my address. I tried to use their online chat. It wasn’t available. I called them, went through a phone menu from hell, got put on hold for fifteen minutes than was hung up on. I sent them e-mail and got an auto-response telling me their e-mail was currently down and that I could call them 24/7 at 888-Get-Charter. I wasn’t going to wait on hold for another fifteen minutes only to get hung up on.

I get messages from Charter all the time. I get informed about them all the time on my on-screen guide. These messages tell me I can order a pay-per-view of some obscure boxer for $34.95. Do I get a message from Charter informing me this is about to happen? No.

So, I’m sitting here at home fuming over my inability to contact Charter over my TV channels being thrown all akilter and not being able to find the channels that I like to watch and wondering if my Tivo will ever get updated so it will record the obscure shows that I love so much. If there was just a channel of communication open to Charter to explain to me what is going on I wouldn’t be a bit upset over what is happening but since they won’t tell me anything I’m starting to wonder about DirectTV.

I don’t know how this will finally play out but there is a case before the Supreme Court right now, actually it may be two cases, asking for an answer to the question, “Is the use of race to determine admittance to a public grade school (K-12) constitutional?” It looks like there is a very good chance that the answer will be a divisive “no”. Divisive in the sense that it seems that Justice Kennedy may be the one casting the deciding opinion.

I have mixed feelings on this as I do many things but I have to agree that, under the circumstances being considered, using race as a deciding factor is not constitutional. Government can’t use things like race, sex or religion as a determining factor in assigning a public benefit. I can understand the desire for school systems to do this and I can even agree that it is probably good for society but it just doesn’t appear to be constitutional to me.

Public schools can’t discriminate based on things outside of the control of the individual. There is this little thing called the 14th amendment that prevents that. Everyone is guaranteed  equal protection under the law. Public schools can only discriminate on the basis of merit. That means grades or abilities.

What makes this difficult on public schools is that the constitution does not prevent individuals from discriminating based on anything when choosing where to live. This means that if people prefer living around people of similar cultural or racial backgrounds they have every right to do so. A lot of schools are under the gun to promote cultural and racial diversity. When the ideal model is neighborhood schools the fact that people tend to live in neighborhoods of people just like themselves then methods for creating this cultural and racial diversity becomes very difficult, if not impossible, while also keeping the model of neighborhood schools.

There was a time when schools were segregated even when the neighborhood those schools served were not. This practice is what led to the current predicament schools have found themselves in. While it seems fair to use race as a way to reverse the problem that segregated schools caused its really a different problem now. It isn’t the schools that are discriminating, its the individuals. So the solution rests with addressing the individuals, not the schools.

I was born and raised in the South by a couple of old fashioned southern parents. One thing they taught me growing up was manners. It was important to them that I say, “Yes sir/no sir or Yes ma’am/no ma’am”. It was also important to them that I say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when appropriate.

It all stuck. I still say all those things and it pleases me to no ends when I hear young people using those same manners. I’ve also done a fairly decent job of raising my own two sons to follow suit. I guess in twenty years I’ll see if it has stuck with them.

One other thing that was impressed upon me by my father and which always seemed to please my mother was holding the door for women. It had nothing to do with women not being able to do for themselves, it had every thing to do with the fact that when I was growing up and before women generally had their hands full. They were carring a purse in one arm and usually the other hand was also occupied holding a childs hand or something. Men tend to like to keep their hands unencumbered so its the least we can do, holding the door for a lady.

I was also taught to assist people who were in need of assitance. Now because of the way society was geared at the time my father was growing up, and to a certain extent this also was true of my younger years, this meant helping women with all things mechanical. Women, for the most part, just weren’t allowed to do things like work on a car or repair an appliance. Some women did anyway but they were the exception. Since they weren’t allowed to do these things they didn’t learn to do these things which meant they were in need of assitance whenever they had car trouble or such.

This teaching to assist those who require assistance also extended to other things that men did for women, like carrying things for them since men were physically stronger and more capable of doing such things.

Growing up in the 60s, though, relationships between men and women began undergoing a change. While African-Americans were demanding their rights women, of all colors, saw a need for parity between the sexes. This was a long time coming since technology had long since made physical differences between men and women irrelevent in 99.9% of all jobs with that 0.1% of jobs consisting of things like offensive linemen on a football team and even with those jobs there were women who could fill the position as well as most men.

This rebellion even extended to the arena of manners. A certain percentage of women no longer wanted men to do things like hold a door for them. In fact some of them would get downright angry with any man who did. Still, a majority of women enjoyed having a door held for them or at least allowed this courtesy to be extended without jumping down your throat. That led to a bit of confusion for me because this rebellion came about around the time that all these manners my parents had been teaching me took hold and became a part of who I was, who I still am.

It took a few years but it seems that most women are now back appreciative of the manners I was raised with. I will still use sir and ma’am, I will still open or hold doors for women and I will still offer assitance to anyone who appears to need it and I may be a little faster to assume that a woman might need it. I know better than to think that women are more in need of assitance but it is difficult for me to overcome certain ways that I was raised.

I’m glad that one of my more feminist friends understands this.