A Journey Up and Down the River (Updated)

A Journey Up and Down the River

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Rivers and other bodies of water tell very interesting stories about us.  The stories can be found in our many colorful analogies and popular expressions, best understood with tongue held firmly in cheek.

The directions of currents significantly predict our destinies. Getting sold down the river means you were cheated.  Being sent up the river suggests you went to prison.  The former probably originated from sour land deals, while the latter surely refers to the Hudson River and a trip from New York City to Sing Sing, or Ossining where an infamous prison is located.

 People in that boat find themselves in hot water, even though they are floating on a cold river.  Maybe they are up a creek without a paddle, but one cannot be quite sure why that is always so bad.  Really, being swept downstream may quite enjoyable.  It is popularly known as going with the flow.

All this is fine unless you are headed for a (water) fall.   It is best to stay philosophical about flow because, after all, pretty soon it will all be water under the bridge.

 But there is another condition where you don't go much of anywhere at all.  Encountered on lakes or oceans more often than on a river, you are becalmed.  Just remember, it is even less desirable to be stuck in the doldrums.  Then you are really going nowhere anytime soon.

  Drifting has a bunch of connotations, but I usually think of it as aimlessly wandering.  Still, drifting down a river can be positive if you think like Huck Finn; then it becomes an adventure.

 In fact, tripping downstream or upstream can be either romantic, mysterious, or both.   Otherwise, why would composers write songs like “Cruising Down the River” (on a Sunday afternoon, with birds making love up above) or “Up A Lazy River”? Why do song writers give rivers names like Moon, Swanee, and Deep?  Because it’s a great shorthand for communicating love, longing, or religious beliefs.

  Not always is the romance a beautiful thing because some people woefully croon “Cry Me A River “.  And as for “Old Man River”, well he’s just plain lazy and keeps on rolling along; that is, “Rollin’ on the River”.   Age really does have redeeming virtues.  Consider the vintage rock singer Tina Turner.  Her gyrations when rolling on the river were never lazy.

  

   What happens on the typical cattle drive or mass migrations of wildebeests?  A river crossing, of course!   At that juncture, we get into big trouble.  Just like us, the animals get caught in cross currents, or they wade into deep water that is over their heads.  Presumably they are not getting into the same kind of hot water as felon.

  But far be it from me to throw cold water on the idea because we all have rivers to cross under many different circumstances.  When we reach the point of no return, then like Julius Ceasar in 49 A.D., we “cross the Rubicon”.  If you don’t have a bridge over troubled water, then a river crossing becomes obligatory.

 The time has arrived to stop, tread water, and drop anchor.  There is no time for a river dance.  However, if you would like to continue, go ahead and walk on water.  You will find it helpful to have a rudder and to stay on an even keel.   

JMB

7/7/2017

The Devil Likes Details

The Devil Likes Details

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

The old expression “the devil is in the details” rings true for those of us who don’t pay attention until he comes   back to bite us.  When I untie my shoes, for instance, the knots on each shoe look exactly alike.  Apparently, they are not.  The laces on one shoe untie easily, but on the other they turn into a nasty knot.   Inevitably, I pull harder which just makes matters worse.  The details bedevil me, but as we discovered long ago, life is a minefield of details.  Even so, the smallest slices of life make a whole pie of enjoyment.

Why are details really quite positive?   Basketball coach John Wooden said, “It’s the little things that make big things happen.”  Coaches watch for details that can trigger a win or loss.  Novelist Ernest Hemmingway observed, “Every man’s life ends the same way.  It is only the details of how he lived and died that distinguish one man from another.”  We remember individuals based as much on personal details as on big accomplishments, and even at that the whole picture is a composite of myriad details.  Finally, philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted, “We think in generalities, but we live in detail.”  Our big ideas become meaningful or life changing only as we hitch details to them.

Success in the business world hinges on attention to details.  In his study of corporations that upscaled from good to great, author Jim Collins pinpoints the importance of getting the right people on your figurative bus, getting the others off, and giving your best riders room to excel.  When I used to interview prospective employees, little details often influenced my thinking.  What was the condition of their shoes?  Did they dress appropriately for a business environment?  Did they look at me directly and shake hands firmly?  Did they say anything that showed me they had done their homework?

Details draw out clues to greatness.  Collins tells the story of a high school cross country running team that won multiple state championships even though many other teams trained just as hard.  The coaches had discovered that the team members ran best toward the end of each race or workout, so they measured not time splits, but rather place splits.  In other words, they looked at how many competitors team members passed during the last stages of a race.  Awards for passing provided incentives to excel.  Essentially, the team focused on a single measurable detail that led to winning rather than placing.  

Recently I read that goals will often take care of themselves when we work on the system that lies under them.  Systems feed on details.  The term bureaucracy comes to mind.  Anyone who has struggled with government mandates, civil service, or the military can already feel the frustration.  But bureaucracy is the operational method of most organizations.  Perhaps because high school civics courses seldom address this topic, young people who confront the world of accountability may conclude that bureaucrats are the enemy.  Instead they should be learning how to maneuver patiently through administrative complexity.  

Admittedly, bureaucracy can make delay the deadliest form of denial.  Yet when functioning properly, bureaucracy is efficient, predictable, impersonal, and fast. If we want things to run smoothly, trained administrators can work magic with the details.

As we age, details mysteriously evaporate.  The results can be disastrous.  For one thing, safety demands attention to them.  Airline pilots and doctors are acutely aware that flight

disasters and levels of hospital infection can be reduced dramatically when simple, sequential checklists of details are used.  As Atul Gawande writes in his book “The Checklist Manifesto”, such lists ensure that stupid but critical stuff is not overlooked, while making sure that people accept responsibility, discuss, and coordinate their efforts.  I always knew there were powerful reasons why my wife and I make lists of everything we must not forget to do. When it is not on the list, usually it won’t happen.  

 What details do we remember best?  Research suggests that memories usually lock in the details of the last scene in a movie, rather than what we see at the beginning or in the middle.  Also, we remember how we felt both before (predicting) and after (recalling) an experience more than how we felt when it actually occurred.  In other words, memories lie. Recording the factual details can be helpful.  Psychologist Daniel Gilbert cautions young people not to accept the recollections of experienced experts at face value because “we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times.”

Despite the dysfunctions of memory, details found in the midst of an experience can nurture happiness in the long run.  Several years ago we visited a breeder of Labrador retrievers.  She showed us a new litter of five black puppies, and, of course, we fell in love with all of them.  We noticed that one was bigger than the others, and a friend suggested that probably he got a bigger share of mother’s milk because he bullied the others aside. Another, said the breeder, was a snuggler.  She picked him up and he rested contentedly upside down in her arms and looked at us.  We chose him.  The details mattered, and to this day they still do.

JMB

7/7/2017

What Became of the DARE Program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)

What Became of the DARE Program?

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Sometimes songs and lyrics gain new meaning even as they kindle memories.  This is true for a musical message I wrote in 1995, simply called “If We DARE”.   Few Pioneer middle school students of that era may remember the song, but many more may recall a program named Drug Abuse Resistance Education and the program’s enthusiastic instructor, Deputy Wayne Krieger.

Deputy Wayne was Cattaraugus County’s official DARE officer when I arrived at Pioneer Central.  He taught middle school kids a popular 10-week curriculum designed to discourage use of controlled substances and related risky behavior.   Besides teaching, the deputy enjoyed dialogues with students and promoting DARE hats, t-shirts, mugs and sundry other paraphernalia including an old Corvette captured in a drug raid. Kids were expected to sign a pledge to resist drugs, and graduation was a celebration often attended by elected officials.

When the deputy heard that I liked to write a little music and play the guitar, he challenged me to write an official song for the program.  I accepted but asked him to share the curriculum so I could fit the right message into lyrics.   What became of the song, and the entire DARE program, confirms the saying that what goes around comes around.

By June of 1996, teacher Ron Tyrell (M. “T”) and others had corralled a group of 6^th and 7^th graders who were willing to learn the song I had composed.   Deputy Wayne convinced the county legislature to let the kids sing them the song.  Not only were the singers given a standing ovation, but the program was granted $16,000 in county funding for the next year.  To celebrate, two months later we found ourselves repeating the performance in the boxing ring at the county fair.

Although the song never made the charts, the DARE program peaked in popularity among parents, teachers, and politicians.   Born in 1983, DARE was conceived by Daryl Gates, the police superintendent of Los Angeles, who believed that the message of abstinence from drugs, gang membership, and violent behavior would be more convincing if taught directly by trained police officers.  Thousands of school districts adopted this intuitively appealing approach.  

Unfortunately, by the late 1990s, the popular slogan of “Just Say No” had been tested in multiple scientific studies and found wanting.  Critics insisted that the program was more indoctrination than education, and that it increased the awareness and curiosity of youth, but had no effect reducing abuse.  Within a few years, DARE was dropped from federal

lists of evidence-based, grant-funded initiatives.  Yet the program persists as a remarkable network of cooperative efforts still thriving in schools across the country.

There are some convincing reasons why.   One is adaptability   After evaluating and surveying more than 30 federally validated programs, two research universities produced a revised DARE curriculum best summed up by the slogan “keepin’ it REAL.”  The acronym stands for Refuse, Explain, Avoid, and Leave.  Instead of just receiving instruction about controlled substances and addiction, students now engage in dialogues and role playing.  Children are empowered by coping strategies and social-emotional ammunition to resist.  Early surveys show promising results.

Although Pioneer no longer uses the DARE program, mandated health education curriculum includes up-to-date drug abuse lessons.  Encouragements in the DARE song suggest how the message has found its way through the medium and still is working well.   Pioneer continues to nurture self-responsibility and control, self-esteem, making good choices and confident communication skills.  As the lyric says,     

“Life’s all about making decisions,

Life’s all about making a choice.

Don’t let others tell you,

Or try to fast sell you,

Cause you have to listen to hear your own voice.”

No one understood this better than Deputy Wayne Krieger who has become a memorable role model for the many school resource officers who have followed him.  As the lyric notes,

“We all need someone to look up to.

Tell me, who do you think it should be?

Is it someone who follows the others,

Or someone who asks what’s important to you and to me?”

Note: Wayne Krieger served as the county’s DARE officer from 1995-2000.  He also taught criminal justice coursework at the county BOCES.  Krieger’s family works with the Cattaraugus Region Community Foundation to support three scholarships annually for students enrolled in BOCES programs who are interested in the field of law enforcement.