The New York Times confirms my belief that crazy people do not only live in Pittsburg, Texas.  Apparently schools around the country have eighth grade graduations, or “promotions,” as the Pittsburg Independent School District preferred to call them.

I failed to realize before reading this article that this is part of a bygone area, when an eighth grade graduation qualified most to enter the workforce.

Marking eighth-grade graduation as a milestone is not novel: in previous generations schools urged parents to dress children nicely for the ceremony. Until the 1950s an eighth-grade education was an acceptable endpoint, qualifying many Americans for blue-collar jobs. But as the employment market shifted, the coin of the realm became a high school diploma. Sociologists noted the phenomenon of the high school dropout.

Modern eighth-grade graduations have become a tangle of outdated definitions of a successful education, inducements to remain in school, and contemporary values about self-esteem and enshrining a child’s many rites of passage. In some communities those rites begin with preschoolers wearing mortarboards. In their blow-out iterations, the eighth-grade bashes borrow from bar and bat mitzvahs for 13-year-olds, quinceañeras for Latina 15-year-olds and sweet 16 parties.

Pittsburg, my hometown, continually has to tell parents to dress their children in Sunday church clothes, not formals and that students should show up in Mom’s minivan, SUV or station wagon rather than a limo, or worse, in an SUV stretched into a limo.

Continue reading at The New York Times‘ website.  Registration may be required, but it’s free.

This weekend, my wife and I visited her cousins in far northeastern Oklahoma. An eight-hour drive under perfect conditions. With summer now fully upon us, however, departments of transportation across the country can now lay pavement with ease. We suffered through several bouts of dealing with road construction.

I never thought I needed a GPS device. “After all,” I said to myself, “I’m an Eagle Scout with an impeccable sense of direction who can read a map. What can go wrong?” Yet I saw/heard an advertisement over the weekend touting a TomTom model which automatically downloads traffic updates so as to route the driver around the road construction or wrecked vehicle. After sitting through road construction as part of an all-day drive, I’m now fully interested in such a device.

Does anyone have a GPS device? If you have one or are familiar with one, please answer:

1. What model do you own or to which you otherwise have access? What company manufactured it?
2. What is/was its purchase price?
3. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being incredibly difficult to use, rank your GPS device’s ease of use.
4. Similarly, is the device annoying? (I fear a computerized voice telling me where to turn will drive me up a wall.)
5. How accurate do you find the technology? (Most of my law school classmates missed my wedding ceremony because Google Maps placed the church on the wrong side of Lake Waco and on the wrong side of Highway 6.)
6. Do you have any pet peeves about your GPS?
7. Would you buy it again? Or would you purchase a different model? If you’d purchase a different device, why?
8. Would you recommend GPS technology to others? Would you recommend your device to others?

Here’s to your first title since the days of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale.  And thank you for beating the Lakers.

Speaking of which, Lakers, 131-92??  Seriously??  Were you jet-lagged?  Asleep at the switch?

I’ve mentioned that, for whatever reason, albeit hokey, I’ve always enjoyed Texas Country Reporter with Bob Phillips. Likewise, I’ve always enjoyed seeing Texas businesses succeed.

Similarly, I’ve always enjoyed telling stories about local businesses having a broader impact. Perhaps it stems from my Pittsburg, Texas, childhood sharing a town of 4,000 inhabitants with what is now the largest poultry producer in the United States and Mexico. Likewise, people are generally incredulous when they discover that most electronic cabling, plumbing fixtures, and reflective sheeting sold in the Southwest are manufactured at the old Camp Bowie site in Brownwood and that 90% of the Snickers, Skittles, and Starburst candies sold in the United States are manufactured in Waco’s industrial park.

Consequently, I enjoyed learning earlier today that (a) Waco has an Owens-Illinois glass manufacturing plant; and (b) that plant manufactures the distinctive green glass bottles in which Miller “Chill” beer is packaged. The Waco plant earned an industry award for the green bottles containing the lime-flavored beer.

Full coverage from the Waco Tribune-Herald‘s “Waco Now” blog.

…that dripping noise you hear is the sweat after taking the Waco Transit system this afternoon.

I decided I’d give it a try going home this afternoon with gas prices nearing $4 in Waco. (We’ll pick up my car from the Baylor campus later this evening when we’re out and about.) Had I not had my car with me, I would have had to walk clear across the Baylor campus from the law school (located on the river) to S. 8th Street.

Waiting at Speight and S. 8th Street wasn’t too bad: I had an ancient magnolia tree and a decent breeze to keep me company.

I then had to transfer at the central bus station and take another bus to 26th & Austin Avenue. I then walked 1 block west on Austin, then two blocks down N. 27th Street to our house. The walk was just long enough to work up a sweat.

I don’t think I’ll be doing it again unless/until I get a bike. Even then, I’m not sure that I’ll do it because I’m not sure the buses have bike racks.

Jim McKay‘s recent passing brought ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” to the forefront of media attention this weekend. Audiences knew Wide World of Sports, hosted by McKay, for airing random, little-known, unusual sports on national network television. In fact, McKay’s show may be singularly responsible for Evel Knievel’s 1970s popularity.

“Wide World” spelled its end E-S-P-N. With twenty-four hours of programming to fill on every day of the week, ESPN co-opted the obscure sports market. I can remember watching the “previously recorded” National Putt-Putt Championship from Walt Disney World, Florida, as a child.

Something about these obscure sports interested many Americans, otherwise, how could “Wide World” have survived for so long? (1961 to 1998, to be exact.) In fact, Wide World spun off coverage of professional bowling and outdoor activities (fishing and hunting). (No word on a putt-putt channel.)

Maybe it’s because we have dedicated cable channels for those sports now. Dodgeball, a 2004 spoof movie, joked about “ESPN8: The Ocho,” a veiled reference to ESPN anchors’ reference to ESPN2 as “the deuce.” It’s not too far from the truth: we now have the Golf Channel, the Outdoor Life Network (now called Versus), and the Outdoor Channel.

Perhaps regional networks, e.g., FSN Southwest, fulfill this role. But then again, for example, I know that Luling, Texas, has a watermelon thump (whatever that is) each year. Obscurity requires the program to introduce the viewer to the activity or sport.

But ESPN’s incessant SportsCenter replays make me long for simpler days when both gas prices and a discussion of the number of sports channels stopped with “1.”

Through Mr. Scott and the folks over at Running Down a Dream, I’ve gained an appreciation for David Brooks, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.  As usual, he gets it right on Americans’ spending, debt, and saving (or lack thereof) habits.

Here’s the link: The Great Seduction.

As I wrote the last post, someone in the next room is playing Rush Limbaugh’s radio broadcast.  Now I’m no liberal, but Rush is really starting to grate on me.

I can’t even hear his commentary.  It’s that stupid jangling sound he plays at least five times before he goes to commercials.  The “EIB network” sound.  The sound that resembles the error noise a Windows computer makes.

Geesh!

AJR

By the way, Barack Obama should become one of Rush’s contributors.  Rush played at least fifteen minutes of an Obama speech a few minutes ago.  You can’t buy that kind of advertising!

Central Library offers video game tourney for youths

As a child, I always enjoyed the Summer Reading Clubs sponsored my our local public library and the Texas Library Association. I don’t know whether it mattered that I enjoyed the experience because my parents probably would have taken me regardless of whether I enjoyed it.

In that light, imagine my surprise to read this in this morning’s Waco Tribune-Herald.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

By Cindy V. Culp

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Is your teen lusting after a Nintendo Wii? Looking for new opponents in Dance Dance Revolution? Prone to summer boredom?

Waco’s Central Library has a cure for all of the above. It is hosting gaming sessions this summer that will allow teens to compete against each other in a variety of games on several gaming platforms. Here’s a quick rundown.

Who can come? What are the hours?

The “Game On” summer program is open to teens who will be entering the sixth through 12th grades. Sessions will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursdays in June and July and from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturdays in July.

The sessions will be held at the Central Library, 1717 Austin Ave. Parents are welcome but aren’t required to come.

What game systems does the library have?

It has Nintendo Wii, Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2.

The GameCubes are connected by a local area network, allowing players on different consoles to compete against each other. Games include Super Smash Bros. Melee and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

The PlayStation 2 consoles are primarily used for Dance Dance Revolution. And for the Wii systems, the library has Wii Sports, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and a couple of other games. It is also about to get the steering wheel accessory so teens can play driving games.

Any tournament play?

Yes, tournaments will be the focus of the Thursday night sessions. Players will keep up with their scores throughout the summer, and the top three finishers will receive a prize at the end. They include a remote-controlled helicopter, movies and a gift certificate to GameStop.

Is there anything to do between games or while waiting for a turn?

Teens can take advantage of any of the library’s other resources. Plus, librarians put teen-friendly materials, such as graphic novels and magazines, around the game room.

Is the library offering any nongaming programs for teens this summer?

Yes, a variety of other programs are planned, including several arts and crafts sessions. For more information, call the library at 750-5941 or go online to http://www.waco-texas.com/CITY_DEPTS/libraryservices/teens.htm and click on the teen summer Web site.

Source: Barbara Frank, reference desk worker at the Central Library.

cculp@wacotrib.com

757-5744

The reading programs are an afterthought! “Oh, yeah, books. We have those too. But come play our Wii!”

I suppose the idea is to get people in the library in the first place. So many people associate “Barnes & Noble,” “Books-A-Million,” “Borders,” or “Amazon,” with books, not their local public library. Maybe we need a PlayStation 2 and Dance Dance Revolution to get people inside the library and show them that it’s a clean, cool (important in the Texas summers), and comfortable place to go. Maybe Mario Kart will show people that there’s no reason to purchase a book they’ll read only once and set down to collect dust in their homes.

Nevertheless, it seems counterproductive to have video games in a library to distract kids from reading. Summer reading programs take a back seat to marketing the library. And here I thought a library’s primary purpose was to foster literacy and encourage people to read.

AJR

You have to love family…really, you do.  Take for example, this phone conversation yesterday with my grandmother.

Mammaw: “Hello.”

Alan: “Mammaw, this is Alan.”

Mammaw: “Are you home?”

Alan: “No, we’re driving back from Tyler.” [At this point, we’re maybe 15-20 minutes outside of Tyler, driving to Waco.”

Mammaw: “I know.  I just got off the phone with your mom and she said you’d just left Tyler.”

I wanted to say, “Then why are you asking if I was home?” But you have to love family!

AJR