What’s Up? – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XIX-XX

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XIX.

The degree to which communication occurs depends on the degree to which the worlds of the speaker (writer) represent similar experiences to the listener (reader).

Strictly speaking, words don’t “mean,” people “mean.” Don’t ask what a word means, ask what the person means when they say the word. Communication involves translation, but we’re not really translating word for word, but experience for experience.

Words have no one true meaning. For the 500 most used words in the English language, the Oxford Dictionary lists 14,070 meanings. Words mean different things to different people; they mean different things at different times; they mean different things in different contexts.

Take the word “beat” for example: He beat (hit) the dog with a stick. He beat (defeated) Joe at chess. This reporter has the mayor on his beat (area to cover). Beat’s me (don’t know)!

Some words can be used as verbs as well as nouns, giving them different meaning depending on how they are used. For example: I love love.

Perhaps we should consider words variables (such as x in mathematics); their range of meanings is limited by the context in which they appear.

Definitions tell you the relationships between words; descriptions tell you the relationships between words and things. Descriptions or examples are usually more useful in problem solving than definitions.

A dictionary should be considered a book of history, not a book of law.

Much misunderstanding is caused by ignoring contexts: I hate policemen who abuse their powers” vs. “He says he hates policemen.”

XX.

Some words do not inform.

Some words are sounds that convey emotional feeling. Growl words: “Jones is a dirty, lousy S.O.B.” Purr words: “It is a beautiful day.” In these instances, the speaker is projecting himself into the words. He is telling you he doesn’t like Jones without really giving you any specific information about Jones. His “beautiful” day could mean any number of things. All you know is that he feels positive about some aspect to this day.

Ritual language: hymn words, college yells, etc.  These are often uninformative, but have emotional reasons for existing. They tend to form bonds of common reactions to verbal stimuli.

People often make noise for noise’s sake. For example, lyrics of songs sometimes do not make sense. And expressions such as “How are you” or “What’s up” are not requests for information; they are simply the response society expects in certain situations.

We are often satisfied with words that tell us nothing. “It’s just politics,” someone says. Does that really give us any information?

Colorful words and catch phrases often influence us, yet they have little or no relationship to the territory: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” “The establishment.” “Is it true blondes have more fun?” “Creeping socialism.” “Liberal media.”

Of Ethan Frome, baseball cards and more (1981 Part 1 of 3)

Let us peer into the past once again as we delve into 1981, a fine year if ever I do say. These memories of 1981 are bought to you by my old Hackbarth Insurance desk calendars that I found a short while ago in a junk drawer.

I’ve got my first-semester final exam schedule written down in January. My classes that semester included two English courses. I’m wondering why I went into computer science when I went off to college instead of some sort of major involving the English language. Oh well, that got corrected later.

Among the classes were Creative Writing and Great British Writers. I don’t remember a lot from Creative Writing except that two friends and I had to write a fiction story, and we wrote oneabout some horses, one of which was named Major Minor. I still have that story amongst my high school belongings. Apparently, I thought it was good or cool or something. Then, years later, one of the guys in class who I never ever talked to, connected with me on one of those meet people Web site. He told me the teacher told me I was to silly. I don’t recall that, but I don’t doubt I was probably silly.

British Writers featured a book called “Ethan Frome,” … oops, never mind. I read that one in Great American Writers. The author of that was Edith Wharton, who was most definitely American. She did die in France, though. So, I’m going to talk about “Ethan Frome” anyway. The only part of that book I recall is the guy sliding down the hill on a sled, trying to kill his wife who is on it with him, so he can be with someone else. Then he sees his wife’s face in the tree he’s planning on running into, and he veers off the path, but ends up maiming her. So he still has to live with her. OK, this is from memory, and my not be entirely correct. You can do a Web search to finddetailsof this book. Sure, you can. I know you are quite capable of this act. Anyway, my friend and I who took the class together thought that was so weird. So we would joke about seeing some girl’s face in a tree.

I sat in the back in Physics class and had problems paying attention. I know I would have gotten a better grade had I listened and studied than had I been drawing up pretend albumcovers with pretend songsfor a pretend band that included friends of mine. If you hear any whacked-out songs like “The Legend of Scrubber McDubber” or “Tiny Cows in Bondage” by a band called “Romulan,” tell them they owe me royalties. P.S. I actually think I have lyrics for those songs somewhere. Just waiting for U2 or somebody to add music.

Among my other classes that semester was Russian. I took Russian from sixth through 12th grade, including three years where my dad was my teacher. He intercepted Russian messages in the Air Force and learned the language then. Our Russian teacher in high school was straight from Ukraine, and when we didn’t study, he’d tell us he was going to give us a Russian karate chop and that he was so sad and he cried at night because we did not do our homework. When it came to me, he was mostly right. I had senioritis, among other things.

Psychology had to be my favorite class that year. We had a student-teacher for part of the semester, and she was flirty and quite attractive. So it was easy to enjoy that class. Plus, we didn’t get penalized for not knowing the answer. “I don’t know” was a perfectly fine answer if indeed, you did not know the answer. The teacher figured that if you thought you knew the answer and got it wrong, that was worse than simply admitting that you really had no idea what the answer was. So, we’d get a point for a correct answer, a point deducted for an incorrect answer and nothing if we chose to not answer at all, which basically told him “I don’t know.” My friend had fun during class, saying “I don’t know” every time he was asked a question. Of course, he got praised from the teacher for it. I’m thinking he just didn’t study.

Then there was Advance Chemistry with Mr. Voltz, one of my favorite teachers ever. He was tough and strict but understanding at the same time. You didn’t cross him, but you also knew he was in your corner. My favorite part of that class was when a friend of mine had brought a liquid to Mr. Voltz that he’d been trying to figure out the composition of. He named all the chemicals that were in it, but missed Cobalt. Eric tried to tell Mr. Voltz that he’d tested for Cobalt and it came back negative for that element. Mr. Voltz, who knew exactly what was in the test tube, looked at Eric with wide eyes and a shocked look. “No Cobalt, my fat fanny!” he retorted. Mr. Voltz proceeded to stir some something into the test tube and the liquid turned blue. Yep, Cobalt.

April 5: Baseball card convention at St. Aloysius Church, 92nd and Greenfield Ave. I started buying baseball cards in 1972. I remember buying my first pack at Drew’s variety store in Wauwatosa when I was supposed to buy floor wax or something that my dad sent me in for. I bought what I thought he wanted, and also saw this wax package that said “BASEBALL” on it. Cool. So I got a pack, for 10 cents I think. Anyway, they were 10 cents a pack the next year when I started using just about all my allowance to buy them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the right product my dad asked me to get, he got angry because he had to go back in and return what I’d gotten and get the right stuff. Plus, at least one of my younger brothers was in the car, too. And I don’t think Dad wanted to leave them in the car without him in there.

This baseball card thing became somewhat of an obsession with me, as my brother and I collected, traded, shot BB gus at and played with these cards until my brother sort of lost interest and I bought out his share. I kept buying these things, branching out into football, hockey, basketball and nonsport cards in the process. I also started buying media guides, book/magazines that feature tons of info about sports teams.

These items, that my mother threatened to throw away on more than one occasion, came in handy when I got divorced. I found a guy in town who bought and sold sports cards and other items, and I sold him a bunch, which helped pay for my lawyer. A few years later, when the child support stopped comign in regular like, I sold some on eBay, which prevented me from going into any more credit card debt than I was already in. I’m getting married next year, so maybe it’s time to sell some more.

April 18: UWM. I am assuming this means my ACT exam held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on a Saturday morning. I overslept that day. That’s what I’m blaming my low scores on anyway. (I think they were low, I don’t actually remember). I actually turned my alarm off and went back to sleep that morning, which was strange because I never did that. I would hit the snooze once or twice, but never turn the thing all the way off and go back to my restful slumber. This time, though, I almost missed the start of my ACT.

As soon as I realized what time it was, I threw on some pants and a shirt, buttoning it on the way across town as I sped through Milwaukee in the trusty (ha!) Fury III (oh, the stories I can tell you about that car). I don’t think I even ate anything more than an apple perhaps. I found a parking spot rather close to the test site, which in itself is somewhat of a miracle. I don’t remember the rest of the day, although I know I was plenty hungry when the test was over.

As graduation neared, I started working more at the Lutheran Home for the Aging. I had shifts of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on most weekends in May, plus some evening shifts. By this time, my friend and I had been switched from the maintenance department to the housekeeping department, although our duties never really changed. We still mopped floors, used the scrubbing machine to clean floors and used a whizzing, whirring waxing machine to buff floors.

Being teenagers, we lost focus sometimes. Being stupid, we wasted time. We even spent one entire day not doing one darn thing. We actually had intended to help one of the maintenance guys at one point, and were waiting for him in the basement, thinking we’d be moving a resident’s stuff from a storage area. But he never showed up and we were not exactly in the mood to look for him either. We sort of got in trouble with our boss, a Mexican lady at that point. We had an older Jamaican man in our department and he’d get all upset that a woman was telling him what to do. In Jamaica, he’d say, the man is the king and the woman is the queen. Oh well, she was the boss.

June 1981 was quite the month for me. It included a visit to our school by the guy after whom they developed the “Baretta” TV series, I called my Psychology student-teacher on the phone, graduated from high school and made the first of two camping trips to Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin. For joy.

Toma was inspiration behind that Baretta show … that’s the one where Robert Blake played the maverick New York detective with the talking cockatoo. Toma was pretty cool. I don’t remember his first name.

I didn’t actually view high school graduation as a major accomplishment. It wasn’t that difficult to graduate. But it did signify a new beginning. In the fall, I’d be leaving home and going to college. I needed to leave, at least for a little while. I think I needed to find out how good I had it. Well, other stuff, too.

Wow, I put in my first 40-hour work week from July 12-18 that year. Five eight-hour shifts at the Home. Money, that’s what I want…

Turned 18 years old on Aug. 3. That was the drinking age back then in Wisconsin, a state known for binge drinking. I didn’t drink then. I started four months later, which was not a good thing. Years later, I’m back to basically not drinking … a tad here and there. Whew! I made it.

Wow, these things are getting long. The more I remember, the more I want to write. We’ll have to do 1981 in two parts. It was a major year of change in my life; it deserves two parts.

Of Grammarman, The Legend of Scrubber McDubber and more (1980)

A continuing compendium of reflections upon the desk calendars I found in my junk drawer recently. The calendars run from 1976-2000 and contain much stuff. Here is what the 1980 calendar reveals about this mysterious, good-looking man:

Jan. 4: Expo Comp paper due. I have no clue … well, wait a minute … I may have a clue that this is. I had a class in high school called Expository Composition, which I believe was taught by one Olive Crawford. Her big thing was to get us to know enough grammar and usage that we could pass out of “Bonehead English” in college and not have to take that introductory class. It was in her class that I learned a lot of the grammar that I correct in friends and family members today. It is one of the reasons I was called “Grammarman” by a cousin of mine. I also have a friend, Art Mellor, who enjoyed correcting people’s grammar and usage back in the day. He probably still does. He was the one who instilled in my pea brain the difference between “farther” and “further.” Farther has to do with a measurable distance, as in “How much farther is it to Point A that to Point B? Further means “additional.” Like, when you hear the phrase “and furthermore,” when someone is going to give you additional information about something. Just one of those cool things you’ll learn by reading this entertaining and informative blog. Yes, siree.

I have my entire high school track schedule written down on the calendar, but not much more during the spring. My track career was fairly nondescript. I broke 5 minutes in the mile … in practice but not in a meet … cause I was upset that the coach put me in with the younger runners for the mile/half-mile practice that day. I also posted my best half-mile time ever in that practice. I have no clue what it was, but I hardly ever ran the 880 in meets, so it was one of my only half-mile times ever. Had I had possessed the knowledge and emotional make-up that I have today back then, I’d have been a lot better runner. Oh well. I guess we’re all meant to progress and mature. Glad I did.

I did make a concerted effort to improve my running ability over that summer, the summer before my senior year in high school, because I so wanted to run varsity during my last year in high school. We had a very good team, and my class featured several good runners. And we had some talented kids behind us. So the task was big. I ran all summer, diligently keeping track of my mileage, even turning in a report to my coach about how much I was running. The problem was I was running all by myself, and not doing it very fast at all. It was more like jogging. In retrospect, I should have taken a few of those runs, shortened them up and ran them faster to get my body used to going faster. By the time, fall practice started up, I was no faster than I was the previous year. It was extremely disheartening and I lost the drive and had a poor season. I actually allowed this to haunt me for several years, and see it as just another example of how big a failure I was. But, while I still wish I’d have done things differently, it’s easier to look at it as a learning experience now.

One of my greatest football plays ever came during our cross country team picnic that year, though. The event was held before the season and included an alumni run. After the run, we went to a local park, had a picnic and played touch football. In later years, this became softball. This particular year, we had just started the game. I was on defense and the opposing quarterback, whose sister was an actress, was looking for an open man to throw to. I thought that he may have had a difficult time remembering who was on his team, since we’d just started. So I was about 10 yards in front of him and I started waving my arms and saying “I’m open.” So he threw me the ball. When I took off going the other way, he realized his faux paus and was embarrassed. I hope it did not scar him as a human being. But it was great folly for me.

Our cross country meets were coed events that year. I don’t recall having girls races at our meets before that year. But most of them were coed this year. We had many athletic girls in our school, but most of them played volleyball and basketball. We won state championships in both those sports that year, and were given a few hours off school when we won the basketball championship. However, we still had to go to school in blizzards and such, which seemed a little odd to me.

I have marked “PAY” on Dec. 4 and Dec. 18 of 1980. That was the year I got my first job with a company, a job that did not involve shoveling snow or cutting grass for neighbors. I worked in the maintenance department at the Lutheran Home for the Aging, or the Home for Aged Lutherans, depending on when it switched names. My friend, Eric, and I were hired to scrub floors at $7 per hour (I think). I probably still have pay stubs somewhere. Eric’s mom was in charge of cutting the checks there and had to input all our info in order for us to get paid. I didn’t have a social security number at the time, and the system kept track of everyone by their SSNs. So, until I could apply for and obtain a social security number, I was entered into the system as 777-77-7777.

Our job was to use this big floor scrubber that you pushed from behind. One person had to push it and the other had to put up the wet floor signs and mop up behind the machine when you made turns because the squeegee doo-hickey at the back of the machine wouldn’t slurp up all the dirty water when you turned at the end of a hallway. We worked for a couple hours a couple evenings a week until the guy who hired us left and/or died of a heart attack. I think it was both as his nephew and I ended up living on the same floor of a college dorm a year later and I was told of such things.

The residents got a kick out of Eric and I and our scrubbing machine. It had a blue light on the top that would rotate like police car lights. We felt somewhat weird turning it on as it would shine blue light around the hallway as we slowly moved up and down past the residents’ rooms, the nurse stations and all. I held this job for the rest of my senior year, the following summer, and for about a year or so on school breaks thereafter.

I actually wrote a song called “The Legend of Scrubber McDubber” in honor of the experiences with this job. There are so many stories to tell from my time at the nursing home. I can’t possibly tell them all now. Perhaps that is a separate post at some point.

Of Tooney Balooney, hockey pucks and more (1979)

A continuing compendium of reflections upon the desk calendars I found in my junk drawer recently. The calendars run from 1976-2000 and contain much stuff. Here is 1979.

On Jan. 13, I’ve got the Marquette vs. Notre Dame men’s college basketball game penned in. My friend, Pat, had season tickets to Marquette Warrior basketball games back then. He’d bring me along to most of them. It was a grand time. I was a big Wisconsin fan, but also loved Marquette at the time. The Warriors had won the national championship a few years earlier and I was a big fan of their coach then (Al McGuire) as well as their next coach (Hank Raymonds). So, it was exciting to get to go to some games, especially if they were free. Marquette used to play at the Milwaukee Arena, since named something else cause some company threw money at the arena folks.

One of the cool things about the Internet is all the information you can find about stuff you witnessed, but can’t remember. For example, I found some details on this particular game when I searched the date and the two schools. The final score was 65-60 in favor of Notre Dame. Highlights for Marquette included Bernard Toone scoring 18 points and Sam Worthen dishing out seven assists. My father enjoyed calling Bernard Toone “Tooney Balooney.” I think it was cause he used to commit turnovers or fouls more often than Dad would have preferred. But he got better at that. The info on the game came from a Web site through Marquette listing what game tapes are available. The tapes go all the way back to 1935.

February of 1979 is filled with sporting events that I predicted the winners of. I managed to get 20 right and seven wrong, which is pretty good, if I do say so myself. I either couldn’t find any sporting events that were being contested on Feb. 26 or I failed to write one down in time to pick it before it was contested. Thus, I picked winners on 27 of the months’ 28 of your Earth days.

I was in the sports prognostication business from way back. My dad used to let me pick the winners in his NFL pool once in a while. I started keeping track of my selections and the results of the games. I did it for years and got to be pretty good at it. I started picking games from all kinds of sports and still have the totals somewhere. I kept the scores of each individual game for years and finally tossed those as I was trying to pare down my sports empire for a change of residence.

We have got all sorts of events on this sheet of paper. We’ve got men’s college basketball games featuring Wisconsin against Iowa on Feb. 1, Marquette vs. St. Louis on Feb. 2 and a team from the USSR against Louisville on Feb. 25. I wonder how many people even know what the USSR was anymore. Everybody called it Russia anyway, so at least now they’re calling the country the right name.

We also see high school basketball contests featuring my Wauwatosa East Red Raiders against the likes of Cudahy on Feb. 6 and the hated Wauwatosa West Trojans on Feb. 16. Go ahead, look up the scores for these. I triple dog dare you.

We’ve also got a couple Milwaukee Bucks NBA match-ups, including one against the old Kansas City Kings on Feb. 27. The Kings have since moved to Sacramento. And an International Hockey League game with the Milwaukee Admirals, the city’s longtime minor-league hockey team. The Admirals beat Muskegon, Mich., on Feb. 12.

I went to a couple Admirals games, including one where the team scored 12 goals (I wonder if this was it). The opposing team’s starting goalie was pulled after allowing a heinous number of goals and he got mad at the crowd chanting “sieve, sieve,” so he hurled his stick into the crowd. Some guy got very upset cause I think it came close to his wife or girlfriend and he charged down to the boards, hurled himself against the plexiglass and I think dislodged it from its holding thingies.

I went with my friend, Pat, and my youngest two brothers. We sat in the first row behind the penalty box. So we got to see an Admiral and a guy from the other team spray water from their water bottles at each other. We also all got a puck one way or another (except for me). We had a couple come off the ice and into our row.  And one of the penalized players also tossed us one.

When I was much older, I also covered a couple Admiral games for the local Sentinel newspaper.

We also see a Women’s Basketball League game on Feb. 10, a matchup between the Milwaukee Does and the New York something-or-other. Many people don’t remember women’s professional basketball before the current WNBA. We actually had a teacher’s aide (we called them bouncers) in high school who had played for the Does – Carol Koopman.

In April, I started keeping track of the scores of the Milwaukee Brewers, who had the year before had the franchise’s first winning record ever. In fact, that 1978 team went 93-69 just a year after posting a horrendous 67-95 mark. So, we Milwaukee Brewer fans were pretty excited about 1979. On April 5, the first game of the year, the Brewers beat the New York Yankees, 5-1, in Yankee Stadium. They followed that up with a 4-3 win two days later and a 2-1 loss on April 8. I must have gotten discouraged by the loss because I stopped writing down the scores after that. However, the Brewers actually went on to record their best regular season record ever (up through 2008 at least) with a 95-66 mark. They also won 95 games in the 1982 season, when they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in their only World Series appearance to date. But they lost one more. So, 1979 stands atop the list.

After checking the splendid site, www.baseball-reference.com, I see what kept the Brewers from beating out the Baltimore Orioles for first place in the American League East that year — the alphabet. Milwaukee only had a losing record against three teams that year: Baltimore, Boston and California — which were the first three in alphabetical order in the league that season. The Brewers, meanwhile, did their best work against the three AL teams that were last in alphabetical order — Seattle, Texas and Toronto — going a combined 28-9 against those clubs.

According to my calendar, I witnessed a 4-3 loss to Toronto on May 4. I think that was the day I obtained my Toronto Blue Jays batting helmet and was chastised by my friend because I bought merchandise of a team that the Brewers were playing that day. It would have been OK to purchase any other team’s stuff that day, but not the opposition’s. Oh well. They had a cool logo.

If you can’t tell yet, I was a big sports freak in my youth. That carried over for many years into adulthood, too.

Anyway, I marked down the NFL draft in the first week of May that year. It may have been the single worst draft that my Green Bay Packers ever had. Now, if their first pick, Georgia Tech running back Eddie Lee Ivery, not wrecked his knee in his first pro game, and then again in his third season, things might have been different. But the rest of the draft produced next to nothing for the Pack, which when combined with a great running back messed up by two major knee surgeries, adds up to blah.

The 1979 NBA draft was a little kinder to my hometown team. The Milwaukee Bucks selected Arkansas guard Sidney Moncrief with the fifth pick on June 25. He ended up being an All-Star and one of my favorite Bucks ever. Unfortunately, he ended up with bad knees, too. What is it with 1979 drafts and bad knees for Wisconsin athletes? Anyway, Sir Sid was a stud defensive player and fantastic offensive player, too.

On June 30, I got to see the Brewers win a game, beating the Seattle Mariners, 8-1, with 21,000 other folks.

Just after July 4th that year, my friend Rob and I traveled by Trailways bus to the tiny little town of Assumption, Ill., to visit a friend who had moved down there earlier in the year. Bryan’s dad was a minister of some sort, Lutheran or Methodist or something along those lines. So, when his dad was called, the family moved to this town, which had about 1,200 people and a drag strip.

Rob and I had to switch buses in Chicago, and the second one was just about full. We couldn’t find a seat together and I had to sit next to some young guy in the back row who enjoyed smoking and wearing muscle T-shirts. I asked him politely if he wouldn’t mind switching seats with my friend, but he told he liked where he was sitting. So I left it alone. He didn’t seem like he was in a real good mood anyway.

I remember going to the drag strip for the races one night. I saw corn dogs on a stick for the first time in my life there. I thought they were funny. We had a water balloon fight, and Rob and I were introduced to the assembled masses at the church service on Sunday. It felt odd to be singled out during a church service.

September started my junior year of high school, and I managed to mark down a few of my times from cross country races we competed in. I’ve got 18:53, 18:46 and 17:55 within the first couple weeks of the season. I think by this time, we were running 5K races. When I started, we ran 3 miles. I didn’t write any more times down for that year. But I do know I ran a 17:31 at the conference meet on Oct. 13. That was definitely a 5K race because we converted it to a 3-mile time to compare to previous years or maybe earlier in the year. Anyway, it was about 30 seconds faster than I’d ever run before. After the race, our coach put together a list of all the kids who ran in that race and, of everyone who was not a senior, I was like 50th fastest. Which, in our conference, was pretty good. Problem was, about 13 of the kids in front of me were from my own school. Which meant if I wanted to run on the eight-man varsity squad my senior year, I had some work to do.

I had my first driving test on Nov. 1 and failed it. I went up on the curb during the parallel parking segment of the exam, an automatic failure. I was relatively upset. I passed it on Nov. 29 and was relatively thrilled. Yay, driving! I was maturing, or so I thought.

Men are Animals – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XVIII

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XVIII.

With words, we describe, label, classify, evaluate, show relationships, etc.

When we use words, we abstract, or select, or leave out, things.

The process level of abstraction is the territory known to scientists. It consists of atoms, molecules, particles, chemical activities, energy, etc. It is a universe of constant change.

The object level of abstraction is the territory known to our senses. We only see a part of what we look at. We pay attention to only a part of what we see.

Happenings, events, activities take place at the process level. We detect them at the object level. These levels do not involve words. The essential and enduring facts of life are the happenings, events and activities.

At the most basic verbal level, we might label an object “dog.” At the next level we might describe the dog in specific terms. We label something “dog,” but that leaves out many details that make this particular dog different from other dogs.

The process of noting similarities and differences can be carried on almost indefinitely.

We tend to confuse levels of abstraction because we use “to be” verbs that suggest “equal to” or “the same as.” Example: “Men are animals.” Are men really the same as animals? Or would it be more accurate to say “are classified as”?

“No matter how you classify (or label) this man, he is still a unique individual.”

Knowing that we abstract, we become aware of our limitations. We see in part and we know it part. But at least we know that we only see in part and know in part. We are aware of the limitations of our language and our knowledge.

Often, we are confused by words because we have no direct (or even indirect) experience with the things for which they stand. Many arguments and conflicts can be avoided by being aware that we abstract and that different people abstract in different ways.

If you give your listener or reader only specific information, he may ask “So what? What does it all add up to?” He is asking for your interpretations and generalizations. If you give your listener or reader only generalizations, he will want you to give him specific examples. He wants data, causes, descriptions, etc.

When confusion arises in using high-level abstractions, ask for examples or descriptions. Consider the boys who “was”:

*a menace to society.

*a thief.

*a juvenile delinquent.

*an 8-year-old boy who took two tomatoes from a neighbor’s garden without asking permission.

Grapefruit Cults – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XVI-XVII

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XVI.

With language, we dissect the universe. We sometimes mistake our collection of parts for the whole.

Language permits us to “split” entities that are not really separate. For example, Einstein recognized the “oneness” of space and time and created the concept of space-time. Also, the verbal split between mind and body was partially healed by the term “psychosomatic.”

Often, we mistakenly look for the cause of something, unconsciously assuming that there is just one cause when there may be several.

Cults generally consist of people who have found the answer. They believe everything will be solved by this one answer, such as nudism, voting one party or another, positive thinking, eating grapefruit, etc.

Such words as “and,” “plus,” and “also” my be deceiving because they suggest simple addition. Often, the addition of one more chemical element to a chemical reaction or one more person to a group will change the situation far more than the word “addition” suggests. The addition of two pieces of Uranium, for example, may set off an atomic chain reaction. It may also have social, political and military consequences.

XVII.

Our language is not well suited to dealing with interactions.

The usual subject-predicate sentence structure suggests one-way and, generally, linear action. The usual form is actor-action-acted upon. There is no suggestion in the language that something happens to the actor as a result of taking the action. For example, “I will teach you” implies that I will do the work and you will be “acted upon.”

Feedback is the taking a look at the results of past performance.

Negative feedback tends to be corrective. Thermostats control the performance of heaters and air conditioners by means of negative feedback. Audience feedback in the form of applause, yawns, frowns or questions enables a speaker to modify his performance to suit the audience.

We can make use of internal feedback when we evaluate the evaluations we make, think about how we think, doubt our doubts, question our questions, etc.

Positive feedback, instead of correcting the performance of a system, tends to move it further from its original position. A “vicious spiral” is an example of positive feedback: He drinks because hi wife nags; she nags because he drinks. Internal positive feedback is at work when we worry about worry, are afraid of being afraid, are ignorant of our ignorance, etc.

When the result of we predict becomes the cause or one of the causes of the result, we have a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If men define situations as real, the consequences of them are real. Therefore, the results of opinion polls may influence as well as reflect public opinion. “I can’t do math” may be a statement of fact about this particular math right now. But it may also be read as a prediction — a prediction that I will fail. If I feel that I am going to fail, why should I try? If I don’t try, I will fail. Therefore, my prediction comes true and I am convinced I was right in the first place.

A category or label may be self-fulfilling. Consider such labels as “I am not a good artist,” “I am stubborn,” “Mary is a nervous child” (said in her presence).

Some conditions or diseases seem to have been caused by being diagnosed. Some people are crippled by being told they have a bad heart. They live and act as though they had such a condition and see in themselves many of the conditions of the disease.

There is considerable evidence that what we call stuttering is caused by over-anxious parents labeling normal non-fluency stuttering. The labeled child becomes self-conscious about his or her speech and, as a result, speaks even less fluently. The parents get even more concerned, and the vicious spiral goes into action.

Just the Facts – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XIV-XV

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XIV.

The structure of our language leads us to confuse facts with inferences and/or assumptions. We have no grammatical constructions to distinguish what we have experienced and what we have assumed. It is easy to say and think we know, when sometimes we are only guessing. The same words may describe or infer, depending on the context. And we learn to perceive and think with this confusion.

Some confusion might be avoided if we reserve the word “fact” for statements of observation.

A statement of fact is made after observation or experience and is confined to what one observes or experiences. Only a limited number of statements of fact can be made about something. They represent a high degree of probability (close to certainty). We tend to get agreement when it is possible to make factual statements about a situation.

Statements of inference can be made anytime — before, during or after observation. They go beyond observation or experience. An unlimited number of them can be made. They represent some degree of probability. We can expect disagreement if only inferential statements can be made in a situation.

We have no choice but to make assumptions and inferences. It is impossible to observe, check and test everything. But it is important to know when we are making assumptions and inferences.

We tend to have more confidence in our inferences when they are based on multiple observations and when several of them all point to the same conclusion. For example, the atomic theory is built out of converging inferences of chemists and physicists.

XV.

The structure of our language pushes up toward either/or evaluations. Because our language is loaded with polar (either/or) terms, it is easy to talk about extremes. Word pairs that fall into this category are: good/bad, old/young, strong/weak, successful/unsuccessful, etc. It takes effort to talk in terms of degrees (of good or bad or strength or weakness, etc.)

Most of the things we deal with are more accurately mapped by statistical distribution than by either/or terms. Are you good or bad? Rich or poor? Your answers to these questions depend on your frame of reference. Scientists, especially, recognize degrees of differences and degrees of probability.

Either/or evaluations occur frequently in the thinking of children, in political speeches, in arguments, etc.

We often create problems for ourselves by thinking in either/or terms and seeking vaguely defined goals.

Here are some of the characteristics of “People in Quandaries”:

*They strive for unobtainable or vaguely defined goals. For instance, they may want to be healthy or wealthy or normal or successful or loved, etc. These are good goals when they are meaningful. However, People in Quandaries tend not to define their goals in specific terms. So, they can never know when they’ve achieved them.

*They consider these goals in either/or terms. They are either successful or unsuccessful, happy or sad, righ or poor, etc. They seem to be unaware of the possibilities in between.

*Because the alternative is so unacceptable, they feel they must achieve their goal.

*They are likely to become frustrated because anything short of complete success (whatever that means!) is considered failure. Anything short of complete “goodness” is considered bad, for example.

*Continued frustration is likely to lead to demoralization … a “what’s the use” attitude.

Of Jim Melka, the GMO and more (1978)

A continuing compendium of reflections upon the desk calendars I found in my junk drawer recently. The calendars run from 1976-2000 and contain much stuff.

Let’s take a look at what can be gleaned from looking through the 1978 calendar:

As a ninth-grader, I volunteered with a friend of mine to go to a couple elementary schools and teach fourth-graders about vandalism. It got me out of class. I think that was my main motivation. There were a few ninth-graders and a few eighth-graders who volunteered. We went in pairs to do the presentation, which included a movie and then a discussion. I thought I was going to be paired up with my friend, which was one of the reasons I signed up. That was not to be, but it was OK cause I got to do my presentation with this really cute eighth-grade girl. So it was all good.

My first presentation was at 9 a.m. on Feb. 8, 1978 at the school I attended previous to the junior high experience. I recall watching kids run shopping carts into parked cars in a grocery store parking lot. I think these hoodlums tipped over garbage cans in the park, too. I’m a little hazy on the details. But I do remember asking the kids what they thought of vandalism, how they could help stop it and the like.  Two weeks later, we hit another local elementary school. All in all, it was a good thing for me. I had to be poised under pressure and act like a responsible, mature person, which was difficult for me at the time. Heck, it’s still difficult sometimes!

I’ve got my whole high school track schedule written down that year. The first meet we had was an indoor meet at West Allis Central on March 3. I think I ran the mile there. I remember running the mile at Whitefish Bay on the 8th. Then, there was the two-mile at Waukesha North on March 14. If I recall correctly, the track at Waukesha North was 12 laps to a mile, pretty darn small. So we ran 24 laps in the race. It seemed as if you were leaning into the turns almost the whole way, which, when finished, made you feel like you were walking crooked.

As a freshman, I stunk. I didn’t get all that much better the rest of my high school running career. Oh, I got better. But I got discouraged, was a numb skull and didn’t realize what it took to reach my full potential in high school. That assessment didn’t just have to do with running, it had to do with just about all aspects of my life. I made excuses and whined instead of doing something about my situation. Thank God I changed my ways.

I worked at the St. Bernard Catholic Church Fun Fest from 6-8 p.m. on June 4 of that year. It was our church’s annual fundraiser, which included kids games, live music and food. My dad usually worked the corn roast. Hank Raymonds, head coach of the Marquette University men’s basketball team at the time, was also working the corn roast this particular shift when I showed up. I needed to do some community service for Boy Scouts, and this was it. I always liked Hank Raymonds. He spoke at a father-son breakfast at church once, discussing motivation.

In July, I worked a few days at the Greater Milwaukee Open … I think. This is the annual men’s pro golf event played in the Milwaukee area. Our neighbor down the street (who incidentally really was at the Ice Bowl) was in charge of the running the parking lots at the event. I got drafted to work a few days. We had to get there really early in the morning, and Mr. Cartier (the Ice Bowl attendee and head boss man) drove me there. Me and two other guys, a teacher form somewhere and a guy in my school a year ahead of me, were in charge of one lot. I found it interesting that people didn’t want to park where we told them to park. For some reason, they thought we were making them park father away than they really were. We did have a nice big rut going through the grass lot as it had rained heavily a day or two before.

This was about the most boring work I ever did. I guess it would have been less boring had more people showed up. But I didn’t really like telling people where to park anyway, so I guess it was about as good as it could have been.

There were these cute cheerleaders from Brookfield Central High School there for some reason and me and the other minor male among us had a crush on the same one. Of course, she hung around with him and not me. Oh well.

I was at the GMO one other time … as a Boy Scout. I carried the scoring standard for a group during the second or third round. Jay Haas and Scott Simpson were two of the three golfers. I don’t remember the third. All in all, golf is a boring game for me to watch. I don’t mind playing once in a while, but it’s not an exciting game for me to watch. Some people say that if you do not find a certain sport exciting or interesting to watch, then you must not know how it’s played. That’s not the case with me and golf. I was a sportswriter for 12 years and I understand the game. I just do not get all that enthused about other watching people smack a ball around.

I showed up for orientation at Wauwatosa East High School on Aug. 30 of that year. The building housed 10th through 12th grades. You could participate in some of the activities as a freshman, but you were housed in the junior high building in ninth grade. I’d run cross country and track, and swam on the high school team as a freshman while still attending Longfellow Junior High School. But now it was time to enter the high school.

It was another cross country season that fall, and the big highlight of the season was on Oct. 18, the final meet of the year. My dad offered to give me (I think it was) $10 if I broke (I think it was) 19 minutes for my 3-mile race. That would be my best time to that point. I was running a junior varsity race against our heated rivals, Wauwatosa West. I recall trying to catch this one guy on our team just about the whole second half of the race. He was a freshman and I really didn’t want him to beat me. I kicked as hard as I could about the last quarter of a mile and caught him just at the finish line. In the process, I leaned forward, slipped on the damp grass and sprawled forward into the chute, sliding on my front side.

It was pretty cool. It was also cool when my dad handed the cash over to me. I think I beat the goal by about 4 seconds or so.

This was also the year that several of us started attending as many home football games as we could. Some of my friends were in the marching band. So we’d sit behind the marching band when they came up into the stands after halftime and cheer the Red Raiders on. The best high school game of my entire life occurred at Hart Park on Oct. 20, 1978. Our team was playing one of the better teams in the state in West Allis Central. They had this awesome fullback named Jim Melka, who went on to become an all-conference player in college at Wisconsin.

It was a heck of a game. But in the final minutes, it looked as if West Allis Central was going to sew up a close victory. We had them pinned back near their own goal line, and it was fourth down, but all they had to do was take an intentional safety and punt the ball away, and we’d be toast.

However, instead of kneeling down in the end zone and giving us two points that wouldn’t really matter, Melka got the ball and started to run out of the end zone. My cousin was an assistant coach on the Central team, and he later told me Melka thought he saw an opening for a touchdown. Our guys tackled him as soon as he got out of the end zone, which gave us the ball back on about the 1-yard line. We ran the ball into the end zone to get within one point on the last play of the game. It was up to the two-point conversion try to either give us the win or the defeat. I think they ran the same play and we scored, giving us a one-point win, and sending the whole student body overt the fence and onto the field to celebrate.

I remember giving Coach Richmond (J.R. to many) congratulations after I got out onto the field. After I figured out there really was no other reason to be out there, I started heading toward the end zone closest to the locker rooms, where there was an exit. I saw Melka standing up against a goal post crying with his head coach’s arm around him. In all my elation over my team’s incredible upset win, I found myself feeling compassion for the other team’s star.

I don’t know why, but I wrote down the Green Bay Packers’ 9-7 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Oct. 29. Hadn’t written any other scores the whole season. I probably shouldn’t have done it. The win gave the Pack a 7-2 record at the time. They only won one more game the rest of the year, finished 8-7-1 and didn’t make the playoffs. It’s my fault.

I was also keeping track of how many consecutive days of school I was attending at the time. I used to get incredibly sick near the end of the first semester or the start of the second semester. It was my annual flu bug or infection of something or other. Made it all the way to 83 straight days, which ended on Jan. 12, 1979. Missed one day and got right back to school. Although I stopped counting four days after that.

Of Hank Aaron, a broken bone and more (1977)

A continuing compendium of reflections upon the desk calendars I found in my junk drawer recently. The calendars run from 1976-2000 and contain much stuff.

Let’s take a look at what can be gleaned from looking through the 1977 calendar:

This year started out with a bang! And it was not a good one as Jan. 1 was the day my father broke his arm falling on the ice at Lake Buelah near East Troy, Wis. My dad’s uncle worked as a groundskeeper at the seminary on the lake and we would go out there every once in a while to fish or swim. On this particular New Year’s Day, we decided to go ice skating. Uncle Clarence had shoveled the snow off a portion of the frozen lake, creating a large, smooth space of clear ice.

My younger brother, myself and my dad got out on the ice after watching Clarence skate circles around us. At least this is how I remember it 31 years later. Now, I have never gotten along very well in the cold, and it was very cold this day. So you know we were not skating — or attempting to skate — since when we stopped I was not yet whimpering and pleading to go home due to frozen fingers, frozen toes or any other body part.

All of a sudden, my dad fell, probably said a “bad” word and clutched his arm. Clarence helped him get up, then Dad said we had to go home. I wasn’t all that upset, but I would have at least liked to get cold first. However, he drove home with one hand, since the arm with the other hand attached was broken.

Now, my dear sweet father claims that he was checked hard into the board by one of his strapping sons (most have been my brother as I was a weakling of a stringbean at the time), and although I do not recall this event in such a manner, I allow Dad to recall it any way he chooses. After all, he is in his golden years now. So, he has earned that right.

Apparently, I was unmoved by this event as I had the audacity to go to my friend Kurt’s house to play the next day instead of staying with my ailing father. Hey, I was 13 years old. Cut me a break, OK?

Kurt’s parents were originally from Hawaii. His mother came to school once when I was in maybe third grade or so and gave a slide show on Hawaii. She used to pack pineapple in cans. If I have the story straight (and it is possible some details of this are not entirely correct), during World War II, Kurt’s parents were stuck in one of those internment camps for anyone who looked like they were from the Eastern part of the continent of Asia, supposedly for “their own good.”

Another thing that took place the first of January was a visit from Grandma Mac, my mom’s mother. I loved Grandma Mac. She always had Archway cookies in a kitchen drawer, hard candy in a dish (the soft-filled red raspberry ones were the best) and Lawrence Welk on the TV.

Another aspect of this calendar was that I had used a puple highlighter to highlight two boxes apiece from January through March. No idea what that was all about.

I also see that I’d written “count dough” a few places. This was a time when I was keeping track of my money. I kept track of what I spent and what I earned and was quite meticulous in the record keeping. And every so often during this period of time, I would tally my net worth. It was five figures at the time, two of them to the right of the decimal place.

By the time 1977 rolled around, I was more of a circular guy, with most of the dates that passed being circled instead of the traditional Xs I used the previous year. X is just so bicentennial! Pshaw!

In March, I had a phone number written down. No idea why. But I just did a reverse phone look-up for it on the Internet and it came up as an unlisted cell phone number. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t someone’s cell phone number in 1977. Remember the first mobile phones? They were so huge. Cannon had one on his TV show. They called them car phones cause they were usually found in people’s cars.

I have “WTMJ 2:00″ written down on March 19th (a Saturday). Wish I could recall what this was for. WTMJ is the big radio station in Milwaukee. It’s part of a media group that included both the big daily newspapers in Milwaukee at the time — the Journal and the Sentinel, since merged — as well as a TV station in town. I have a feeling that because I wrote “WTMJ,” I meant the radio station. It must have been a note to listen to the station at that time for some special reason. I did go to the WTMJ TV studio once when I was in Cub Scouts, but that was well before 1977. Our Cub Scout pack went to a filming of the Bozo show, some local show that aired on Saturday or Sunday mornings. It featured the clown, who did some stuff that I think was supposed to be funny. They also had kids in the audience, and they would pick some out of the crowd to play a game. My friend, Tim, got picked. I did not. But it was an experience anyway.

I kept track of all the Milwaukee Brewers’ promotional days on my calendar that year. Starting with a kids day special on April 14 against the Baltimore Orioles all the way until the end of September, I wrote them all down. The Brewers played their games less than five miles from our house and we used to go fairly often. When my brother and I got old enough, my dad would drop us off at the front gate and pick us up after the game. We went to bat night once and got a red Coca-Cola bat. That was one of the coolest promotions I ever went to.

We also went when we got a gold-colored three-ring binder. It was my first recollection of a promo day, and my dad called it “present day.” That was also pretty cool. We used to sit in the bleachers for $2 a seat back in those days. Talk about cheap entertainment. I can’t hardly afford to go to Major League Baseball games anymore.

I remember seeing Hank Aaron hitting a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning of the second game of a doubleheader against the Texas Rangers to complete a sweep of the twinbill on July 11, 1976. It was Aaron’s last year in a brilliant career and it was the second-to-last home run of his career. My brother and I took a special city bus down to the stadium and wondered if the bus would wait for us as we, along with thousands of others, waited after the game for Hank to emerge from the dugout and give a curtain call as we chanted his name and cheered for him. Later, when I became a sportswriter, I had an opportunity to interview Hank Aaron.

Here is my younger brother’s recollection of the event: “It was a boring game and we were sitting in the top row of upper deck.  To pass time, we were stomping on cups and throwing them up in the air to see the wind carry them out of the stadium.  We were out of cups and went to get more soda when a really old security guard accosted us and sent us out of the stadium.  He followed us down close to the entrance, but didn’t see us all the way to the gate.  It was only the 4th or 5th inning and Dad wasn’t coming to get us for awhile, so we went back in and found seats in the lower grand or lower box right behind the plate.  We watched the rest of the game and Hank’s 754th home run to win the game from those seats.  I believe he hit a foul on the pitch prior to the HR that just missed the foul pole in left.  The HR hit the foul pole for the walk-off win.”

On May 2 (the first school day in May 1977), I started a countdown of the 31 school days remaining until the end of eighth grade. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. Day No. 1 was listed as June 13 (a Monday). If the final day of school was a Monday, we must have had a snow day or two added to the schedule. We typically started school the day after Labor Day and got out the second week of June. My kids start the second week of August and get out before Memorial Day. I prefer it the way we did it.  I think August should be a summer vacation month. For one thing, the Indiana State Fair is still going on while kids go back to school.

The summer of 1977 was a year of camping for me. I went to a Russian language camp for almost two weeks in northern Minnesota, then took a week off, and headed to Boy Scout summer camp in northern Wisconsin.

Russian camp was cool. It was my only experience with a language camp. We used Russian money to buy candy. We had name tags with our Russian names. We spoke as much Russian as we could. We eyed the girls, played soccer, visited the Mississippi River headwaters and made friends with kids from all over the place. My dad was a Russian teacher — learned the language in the U.S. Air Force — and I had him for a teacher for three years.

This particular year at Boy Scout camp, I set the troop record for the mile swim and actually swam more than a mile because the guys in the rowboat in front of me went off course. I’d swam during the summer with the local parks swim club, so swimming a mile was no big deal to me. In fact, when I found out we’d gone too far, I wanted to do it again so I could lower my time even further. But I think the adults didn’t feel like rowing a mile again and dissuaded me from my attempt.

I went to Boy Scout summer camp two, maybe three, times. Among the things I recall from that were our troop winning a greased watermelon competition at the beachfront games, accidentally inserting a cooking fork into my assistant pack leader’s forearm (anger and frustration are a bad combination of emotions while cooking), having a slightly younger Scout read Bible passages to me and discuss them with me as we turned in at night, whittling a piece of wood into the shape of a deer’s hoof and giving it to my dad, shooting a 22 very poorly at the rifle range and the final campfire on the final night.

Of the bicentennial, an ill-fated note and more (1976)

I was looking through my junk drawer the other day — everybody’s got a junk drawer, don’t they — and  came across a stack of old desk calendars I’ve held onto. These are the tiny calendars with the back that unfolds so you can prop it up on your desk. They came from Hackbarth Insurance and were always given to my parents, who were clients, around Thanksgiving or so.

I’ve got them from 1976 through 2000. I think my parents still get them, but mom forgot to give me the one in 2001 and that sort of ended the run.

I used to use these calendars to keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, ballgames and other important dates.

They span quite a bit of my young adulthood. Heck, that’s 25 years right there, from the second half of my seventh-grade year up until the time I was 37 and had four kids — three biologically. That approximately 3-inch stack of papers elicits many memories … mostly good.

I used to cross out each day as it passed. All the boxes in January 1976 were X’d out with a brown felt-tip pen that I thought was so cool. I mean who ever had colors other than blue, black and red back then?

Much to my chagrin, I lost that pen on Feb. 6, 1976. Must have; Feb. 7 is marked out in light blue starting my downward spiral into the dark pit of … whatever.

I started writing down events of importance in March of that year … a Boy Scout Court of Honor ceremony (I quit a few merit badges and a massive project short of Eagle Scout) and the Milwaukee Sentinel Sports Show that used to feature some guy throwing axes across a stage (at least that’s about the only thing I remember; that and lines and lines of boats).

April’s Boy Scout activities included a trading night, where my buddy, Chip, and I traded baseball cards. I’m not sure if anyone else traded anything. I think that night was made for Chip and me. That’s where my allowance went as a kid. You could get cards for 10 cents a pack back when I started collecting seriously in 1973.

Of course, 1976 was the bicentennial year. So there was much excitement leading up to July 4. We always had a parade in town on Independence Day and if you hung out with the Parks Department folks, you could dress up your bikes in red, white and blue stuff. I think I did that once.

Wonder why I crossed out August 3, my 13th birthday, that year. August 1976 must have been a wacky month. After a few months of simple Xs crossing out the squares, I chose to go nutty keeping track of the days in August. Curly-cues, stars, lines, shading … all was used that month. I blame it on puberty. What else could it have been?

September was no better, and I even marked the first day of my eighth-grade year in junior high with a “School Starts Boo!” entry on Sept. 7.

For some unknown reason, I have six dates in October marked with a big blue “G” in a blue box. What is this G? What could it have stood for? I am puzzled. I assume the G is the first letter of something that was to happen on those days. But what? Golf? I was not on a golf team. Girls? I was too afraid of them. This may remain a mystery forever.

One thing I wrote down that I do recall the details of was on Oct. 20, when I sent the Oakland Raiders a letter requesting they send a media guide. I even started the letter, “Just because I live in Wisconsin doesn’t mean I can’t like the Raiders,” hoping that would show them that I really liked the team. Of course, the Green Bay Packers come first. But back then, I really liked the Radiers, too.

Oh wow! I just figured out what the G’s stood for! This is so wacky cause I remembered while I was IM’ing my current and most wonderfully bodacious girlfriend. G stands for Ginny, a girl I had a crush on that year. Those were the six times I called her. That is quite a story, too. A story of me passing an ill-fated note of a desirous nature to her during math class that got passed on to others and elicited much taunting upon my person. Man, for a while I didn’t even want to go to school anymore. But, my dad was my Russian teacher, so he’d have noticed if I didn’t show up.

There really isn’t much of anything else on those pages from 1976. Just a mention of getting guy’s gifts from hiding spot on Dec. 24. I’m not sure what guys I’m talking about. It may have been my three brothers. We used to do a Christmas morning celebration thing. But when we got older, it turned into a Christmas Eve thing. It’s been Christmas Eve for a long time now, even as two of us have kids.