A Rural State of MInd

 

A Rural State of Mind

A rural spot is much more than a location. It is a state of mind and feeling.  Having lived in the hilly farm country of western New York for three decades, my wife and I are dedicated believers in “ruralness”.  In retrospect, it took quite awhile to get there.

In the 1970s and 80s, we lived close to downtown Albany, near the shopping malls and the flight path of the airport.  Several times a day, the jets would rattle our windows, and their landing lights would flash on our house. We adapted to crowded bus rides to work, continuous traffic noise, weekend past times of shopping, and a tiny lawn hardly worth mowing.  We made the best of city living, but a rural future was something we yearned for.

Where and how I grew up explains a good deal of my abiding interest in rural life.  My dad took me hunting and fishing for years as I grew up in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.  I matriculated at a rural college in the mountains of Massachusetts and learned in American studies that small-town life is woven through our country’s history.   

Many years later, as research director for a state association of school boards, I realized that upstate and downstate New York are different worlds in many ways.  Whenever I spoke to regional school boards, I was always impressed by the strong flavors of conservative practicality and self-reliance found upstate, often rooted in farming or traditional small businesses.

 There are confusing ways to classify rural places for economic and demographic purposes, but my favorite description is “sprawling open spaces, extensive agricultural production, and communities with vibrant histories”.  Eighty-seven percent of our land can be described this way.  A sparse 18 percent of our population lives there.

After 22 years of city living, we finally landed in the rural heart of western New York, where I eventually became superintendent of a school district of 12 towns and 250 square miles.  My wife became superintendent in a small adjoining district so we gained a comparative perspective.  In many respects our districts are outer suburbs of Buffalo, with a share of daily commuters to and from the city.  My district crosses four different counties, which creates multiple challenges of rural bureaucracy.  The schools out our way are really like community centers and support systems for services and activities.  One of my proudest accomplishments was to support construction of a multi-purpose barn for career and technical learning on the high school grounds. Our FFA (Future Farmers of America) is an award-winning multi-generational phenomenon.

Soon after we purchased a home several miles away from town, we discovered some of the peculiarities of being out in the country. Distance to the nearest medical facility and grocery stores became significant. So did the operation and maintenance of a well and septic system. Nighttime seemed darker, traffic passed infrequently, and winter whiteouts became an urgent topic of conversation. Seasonal festivals and county fairs, musical concerts and parades, and group yard sales are signal community events. The police blotter in our local weekly newspaper became a source of endless fascination.

In perspective, being fundamentally rural has a unique character of its own.  Especially in retirement, we have enjoyed enduring friendships, a relaxing and stress-free solitude, deep connections to the land and nature, changing seasons, and a sense that the incredible beauty and space of rural living had always been waiting for us.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mixed Messages of Common Sense

 The Mixed Messages of Common Sense 

By Jeffrey M. Bowen 

The features of common sense have always intrigued me because they seem so easy to identify but slippery to define.  Consider works of art in a museum.  A famous  painting may appeal because you would love it over your fireplace.  Another display shocks you because it consists of broken glass shards hung around a bare light bulb. The painting appeals to your common sense because you know what you like when you see it, hear it, or use it.  As for the glass shards, the big aesthetic idea may be to violate your expectations.  The truth is, nonsense to you may make great sense to someone else.    

Common sense appeals to me because I like to think I own more than a little of it.  Usually, it is a simple and reliable guide.  But I also realize that new discoveries and strange revelations often occur because they contradict our common sense.  Current media on the internet spews disinformation and propaganda to disrupt our commonsensible opinions.  

My interest in common sense is its potential connection to artificial intelligence (AI).  Will we ever be able to adapt common-sense models to the internet?  We are headed that way, but the big challenge may be empowering the predictions of the artificial mind to instantly shift technical gears based on intuitions and emotions.  Imagine the absurdity of an auto dealer who tells you that the latest model in their showroom has a special button called common sense.  It would activate your controls when you attach a sensor to your ear and press the button.  Don’t dismiss the idea too quickly because self-driving cars are already a reality.  

American history provides a compelling inspiration for my curiosity about common sense.  In April 1776, an essayist named Thomas Paine published a phenomenal 47-page booklet titled “Common Sense”.  The popularity of the essay, relative to the small size of the colonial population, make Paine’s reasons why the colonies should declare their independence from Britain one of the most influential written statements in our history. 

Just a few months after its publication, the Continental Congress adopted our Declaration of Independence, with its opening sentence, “We declare these truths to be self-evident...” Common sense, right? Ironically, in the same sentence we endorse the idea that all men are created equal.   Centuries later we still struggle with the implications.   

 The echoes of our forefathers can be heard in deep suspicions of authoritarian elites and undemocratic dictatorships.  Our citizens prefer authentic experience and verifiable proof.  What is more, constitutional democracy provides a guaranteed framework of legal protections that assure our right to vote and stabilize our ship of state.   

The bedrock is common sense: that is, our ability to make sound, reasonable judgments and decisions based on simple and practical knowledge.     

Evidence can be found at the checkout counter of many bookstores, where you will find books full of advice like “Life’s Little Instruction Book’” or “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”   Most of the self-help advice is common sense.  It is revealing for what it says about our culture and traditions.  Some is basic; for example, don’t walk into traffic or touch live wires.  Other statements recognize being polite, like saying please, thank you, and even putting the cap back on your toothpaste before someone else in your household uses it.   

Homey examples like this do not mean that common sense has been overlooked in the academic world.  One familiar theory is called the cognitive continuum. At one end are reflective and intuitive judgments.  At the other end is rationality. In between are combinations, for instance using a rationale to justify intuition.  

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, has become famous for explaining these two co-existing systems of thinking.  The first (system 1) works fast and intuitively, without thinking.  It emphasizes first impressions and can either save us in an emergency or reveal sudden opportunities. When you apply a rule of thumb and screen out extraneous information, you are exercising your intuition.   

On the other hand, a rational thinker (system 2) weighs the odds more carefully and is less willing to take risks before reasoning through all of the alternatives.  If time is available, and an issue is not truly complex, this kind of thinking prevents too many disastrous mistakes.  Yet it can become expensive, and more background knowledge may be needed.  

 Interestingly, “deliberation without attention” has strong merits when the number of choices is restricted, and a pattern of previous decisions can be applied.  Too much conscious thought may not produce the best result.  

The value of intuition, when mated with common sense, depends on the situation.  Complications arise when personalities, including emotions and biases come into play.  On balance, gut feelings, are often as effective as lengthy analysis.  But it is sensible to pay heed to the mixed messages of common sense.  You may encounter either a garden of truth or a mine field of lies. The key is not to follow intuition blindly, and never to underestimate it.  

The Internet Has Transformed Our Lives

                                     

The Internet Has Transformed Our Lives

 What if someone at your side offers you mind boggling benefits?  At your request, you are given access to an unlimited amount of information about almost anything.  Your companion enables you to chat instantly with friends anywhere in the world.   Should you wish, the wireless wizard who likes to live in your pocket will entertain you with games, give you the latest news and your favorite music, act as your tutor, psychologist, doctor, list keeper, or financial advisor.

 For those of us who still remember the Twilight Zone on television, the science fiction of 50 years ago has become a marvelous reality.   We still have the habit of attributing human traits to technology, but these days the companion with amazing assets is really a network of digital networks not much older than we are.  We call it the internet. 

  I suggest that the “net” is like a wizard because its responses to our commands seem almost magical.  Yet how we make and react to those commands is embedded in feelings, emotions, and views of the world that belong uniquely to us.  Our use of the internet reveals how information and data can influence our personalities, emotions, and behaviors for better or worse.

 In his 1970 book “Future Shock”, Alvin Toffler invented the term “information overload”.  His futuristic warning was about the “shattering stress and disorientation” that we induce by overwhelming the human capacity to adapt.  Acceleration of knowledge was Toffler’s shock factor.  To cope, he told us that we must learn to deal with transience.  We must adapt and learn how to learn.

 There is plenty of challenge in Toffler’s warning because the growth in our usage of the internet has been phenomenal.  Pew surveys show that at least 95 percent of all U.S. adults are net users.  Eighty percent subscribe to high-speed internet at home.  Cell phone ownership has accelerated to 97 percent among those under 50, a proportion just 35 percent in 2011.  The rate of internet use by those 65 and older impressively jumped from 14 percent in the year 2000 to 88 percent today.

 As a senior citizen, I embrace the internet via a multitude of web sites that constantly provoke my curiosity or entertain me.   Gradually, I have recognized some nagging liabilities from hours of screen time.  Research confirms certain happenings. These trends distress educators in particular.  A chronic attempt to ban cell phones from the classroom is just one result.  Young people may be more vulnerable to social abuses or virtual addictions than I am, but the personal impact for me includes a shortened attention span, quick and faulty answers, loss of memory, and even real-time social isolation. 

 I think of the internet as a universe of information organized for access and utility on a grandiose scale.  Meanwhile, especially since the 1950s, its connections to something called artificial intelligence (AI) have been maturing.  Dependence on the internet is fundamental, but instead of just providing data and options, AI builds on data to make choices and decisions, to plan and set goals. 

 Alexa is my daily personification of AI.  She is the virtual technology assistant for Amazon and is capable of natural language processing for a growing variety of informational chores.  Typically, she tells me about information she gleans instantly from the internet. More generally, AI can perform complex tasks that historically have called for human intelligence.  Built upon machine learning, it creates algorithms which are like electronic recipes that enable computers to create patterns, relationships, and insights based on massive amounts of data derived from human experience.

There are various levels of sophistication in the expanding world of AI. Currently one of the highest is called generative.  As a photographer who has come to rely on the processing miracles of Photoshop, I marvel at the latest innovation of the Adobe company.  I can plug in my photo, and then expand its margins in any direction to produce an entirely realistic and accurately rendered addition to the picture.  Or for that matter, I can articulate in words the addition or replacement I want in a photo, and then immediately see samples of the result from which to choose. 

 Countless AI variations can make our decisions and choices seem almost effortless. It is well to keep in mind, however, that issues of data privacy and security are compelling. AI can be used to invent visual renditions based on elaborate fiction.  Whether using the internet or applying AI to it, we can tap capabilities to create wondrous conveniences and efficiencies.  My warning is that we must never fall back on allowing these digital miracles to become an easy escape from thoughtful learning.  We must remain the arbiters of truth.  

 

Everyone Leads a Life of Rituals

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

 In early March pairs of geese noisily arrive and patiently wait for the ice on our pond to melt so they can nest.  Hundreds of miles to the east, our collegiate granddaughter leaps up and down and shakes her shoulders and legs as she and everyone else at the starting line nervously prepares to compete.  Meanwhile, my wife spreads ingredients across our kitchen island as she reads directions for a dinner casserole from her old Fanny Farmer cookbook.

You might think these activities have little to do with each other. However, they share a common thread called rituals.  These are not really the same as habits, compulsions, or traditions.  A habit may define what we do almost automatically without thinking. Compulsion drives us to do something despite ourselves. Tradition is a repeated practice we embrace because it bonds us together for sharing at particular times. 

Rituals are like these but different in intriguing ways. They define who we are and infuse our lives with purpose and emotion.  For instance, geese instinctively mate and reproduce, but they do it in ways that bind them together for life.  With their new goslings, they parade across the water and fields.  One adult leads the group, the other follows, and often an apparent uncle serves as a sentry.  They become angry and trumpet their displeasure when their ritual is disrupted.

Our granddaughter’s starting line rituals may loosen muscles or reduce anxiety, but they also affirm training routines, competitive desires, and preparation that is universal among all track athletes. 

 

My spouse’s culinary rituals are rooted in the pleasure she takes from commitment, skill, and a delicious result that defines just who she is.  I am the beneficiary of her rituals, but so is everyone in our extended family who enthusiastically repeats the same rituals.

A rewarding investment of effort is crucial for ritual-building. In his insightful analysis of the “Ritual Effect,” Harvard business professor Michael Norton describes why the Betty Crocker baking company experienced a big sales slump after World War II.  

Young women initially enjoyed the simple convenience of the company’s fully premixed cake batter.  But within a few years a decline in sales prompted the company to ask the women why.  It turns out that they felt guilty about doing too little and wanted to add or adapt their own ingredients to make the batters their own. By switching the recipe from dried eggs in the package to real eggs that could be added, the company regenerated sales.

Something called the IKEA effect, generally known as DIY, has become spectacularly successful for the same reasons.  People value a product or activity more if they have put something of themselves into it.  Scholars call this an endowment effect.  Chefs would readily agree, as would most do-it-yourselfers. 

Professor Norton has spent a decade exploring rituals. His work explains why religious ceremonies and major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas produce an enduring impact on our lives.  Yet legacy rituals like these do not fully describe the impact of our own personal daily ritual signatures.

Rituals may involve a rite of passage or lifestyle dividing points.  They can build or destroy relationships.  Sometimes they create experiences we savor and love, but at other times they generate anxiety or stress.  Marriages, the birth of a child, or moving to a new job can produce either positive or negative rituals.

In any event, personal rituals are pervasive.  When one disappears, another may replace it.  Professor Norton coins the term “emodiversity” to describe the unique richness and changeability of rituals in our lives.

Symbols are linked to rituals. Often those symbols, whether they are objects or acts, provoke powerful memories. For example, our basement is a repository of ritual memories: books I refuse to dispose of, ties I have collected, and workout equipment I try to use every day.

The phenomenon of hoarding may be rooted in memories of bygone rituals.  Considering my own hoarding tendencies, my wife’s sometimes compulsive pursuit of a clean and organized house (she calls it being “house proud”) is a much-needed compensatory ritual. 

Rituals need not be a big deal. One of the memorable and distinctive examples in my life occurred in my third grade at the end of each day. As we filed out of the classroom, our teacher, Miss Magnusson, would make sure no ill feelings would linger. She required us to line up and shake her hand as we said goodbye. I never forgot her gesture.

Professor Norton’s research confirms that “rituals are everywhere, imbuing our ordinary actions with extraordinary power.” Their essence lies not in what we do, but in the meaning and emotion we give to just how we do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gondor the Beast

 

The Story of Gondor the Beast

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

A strange creature  inhabits our backyard. He is a 350-pound concrete beast with fangs,  wings, and eyes that seem to glow in the twilight. After eight years, he has become an old friend who reminds us why we love to scare ourselves.

His name is “Gondor,” which is the term J.R. Tolkien used to describe the Middle Kingdom in his famous trilogy.  This moniker won first place in our own facebook contest, but our creature’s  formal name is a gargoyle or chimera.  The former term sounds like gurgle or gargle for good reason.   Gargoyles are the grotesque offspring of Gothic church architecture in the Middle Ages.  They are fantastical creatures who perch on steeples and steep rooftops.  Their mouths are spouts to drain rainwater off the roof and sides of a building.  

 On the other hand, chimeras seldom have spouts, but they are nonetheless nasty looking Greek mythological beings composed of animal parts – lions, goats, dragons (wings) with a snake-headed tail.  Gondor is one of those snarling hybrids, crouching on his haunches, resting on huge claws, and baring fangs.

 The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris is a favorite haunt for chimeras that were sculpted in the 1800s.  Hundreds of years earlier, so the story goes, a dragon-like beast would rise from the Seine River and eat terrified residents with grisly abandon.  Helped by a Catholic saint, enraged citizens trapped and burned the dragon.  However, his head and shoulders resisted flames, so instead his hide was nailed to the church to ward off evil.

Today the biggest numbers of chimeras and gargoyles can be found on Catholic churches. across France.  They also sit on city rooftops in places like New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.  American horror novelist Stephen King insists that they are quite alive and always watching us from above.  

Our own story of Gondor began eight years ago when we visited our daughter in Albany.  She suggested antiquing at a downtown salvage yard.  There we discovered a demonic statue who looked like he might have flown in from the rooftop of a nearby Albany church or office building.  Fatefully, I remarked, “Wow what a birthday present he would be sitting in our yard back home!”

My wife and daughter mischievously hatched a plan to ship the creature 300 miles across the state to our rural home.  My son-in-law Bill arranged to have the beast hoisted and lashed onto the bed of his truck.  Out on the thruway gawkers would pull even, wave and laugh at his fierce cargo. I thought the chimera’s arrival was the best possible birthday.  Several husky friends wrestled my unusual gift onto a convenient concrete pad.  Today, years later, he stares balefully at anyone who passes by. 

In recent decades grotesques have become amazingly popular. Their shock value has diminished, but their entertainment value has skyrocketed.  They show up as Disney cartoon characters or beings that invade from other planets.  My favorite classic horror show is the 1984 “Ghostbusters”, starring actor Bill Murrey and friends. Two mythical figures, the keymaster and the gatekeeper, combine evil forces to occupy a city rooftop and unlock the gates of hell.  Like many other chimeras, the keymaster’s “terror dogs” break out of their shells and raise havoc.  Ultimately, they are exploded by the laser guns of the ghostbusters who rescue the city.  After four iterations, ghostbuster movies have become a cultural phenomenon.

From Gondor to Ghostbusters, the popularity of grotesques begs the question, why has it become such a thrill to scare us out of our wits? Monstrous characters have almost become our heroes and friends.  The spiritual message of repenting in the face of horror has worn off.   Words like enticing, mesmerizing, and addictive come to mind.   We have gotten used to real and fictional grotesque happenings all around us.  Still, we take comfort in knowing that Gondor is alive and watching for evil invaders.  

 

 

Reading To Children Is Time Well Spent

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

At three years of age, I spent hours on my grandmother’s lap mimicking the nursery rhymes she read aloud.  Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and the cow who jumped over the moon became my earliest childhood friends as she helped me trace the words and pictures on every page.  My dad tape recorded those expressive recitations.  The memories have endured for years.

I marvel at the influence of those early oral reading experiences. I was fortunate to have a family who appreciated reading aloud as a critical tool for developing literacy and for pleasure. Recently, a nationally representative sample survey of nearly 10,000 four-year-olds found that 25 percent are never read to, and another 25 percent have this experience only once or twice weekly. Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly endorses the practice in early childhood because it “builds language, literacy, and social-emotional skills that last a lifetime.”

The joy and value of listening to someone read aloud is well understood by teachers, but in elementary school it gets crowded out by the “science of reading.”   Over the last decade 37 states have passed laws and policies that call for “evidence-based” literacy instruction. The term has become a slogan that applies to many different scientific elements of reading proficiency.  Few teachers are prepared to make field-tested measurement-driven methods work in their classrooms.

Our state’s current executive budget proposal includes $10 million for districts to train 20,000 teachers in the science of reading. Governor Hochul is embracing a politically appealing dedication to phonics instruction.  In other words, first teach children how to decode, that is to connect letters with sounds, and to translate sounds into speech. Spelling and word meanings play an important part.  The Governor is not wrong, but a balanced approach to literacy must also incorporate comprehension.  

Surely it is important for children to develop a vocabulary, but applying it calls for hitching it to knowledge and understanding of content. A child may be able to read words perfectly and not be able to tell you much of anything about the story behind those words. The skills and strategies of reading are strengthened when attention is given to comprehension which enables children to grasp meaning and fit it into new situations.   

We have many reasons to worry about children’s declining reading skills. The pandemic chronically disrupted classroom instruction. Reading proficiency scores hover at an all-time low. The same is true for math, for which reading literacy is also vitally important. Hours spent on screen time and segmented electronic content add to children’s loss of concentration and sustained reading stamina.

 Elementary teachers highly value the time they spend reading from books rather than so-called basal readers.   Instead of relying on packaged anthologies with disconnected exercises and workbooks, teachers who link their curriculum for science or social studies to oral book chapters of nonfiction find their students are more engaged and motivated.  With copies in hand, the children can read along with their teacher.  Often, they are inspired to find and read books on their own, something every school media specialist appreciates.

Parents and grandparents of preschool children can enrich their children’s almost intrinsic love of stories and their amazing absorption of vocabulary long before kindergarten.   Nursery rhymes were my introduction to literacy.    Years later, my wife and I spent many hours reading stories to our children from books like “Blueberries for Sal”, “Barbar the Elephant” and “Curious George,”. There is a reciprocal benefit to reading with your child or grandchild.  Not only does it grow their vocabulary and awareness of the world, but it reinforces parenthood in ways that last a lifetime.